Crucix: a free, self-hosted OSINT intelligence terminal
Crucix is a free, open-source OSINT intelligence terminal you self-host. Monitors 27 live feeds (fires, flights, markets, conflicts) and pings you on Telegram.
What it is
Imagine a wall of screens in a spy movie — satellite fire alerts, live flight paths, radiation readings, commodity prices, shipping routes — except it's running quietly on your own laptop, costs nothing to operate, and pings you on Telegram when something worth noticing happens.
That's roughly what Crucix is. It's a free, open-source project you install yourself, and it checks 27 public data sources every 15 minutes: wildfire detection, economic indicators, conflict events, maritime traffic, live market prices. Everything shows up on a 3D globe that spins in your browser. No subscriptions. No third-party company holding your data.
When something crosses a threshold — a spike in a commodity, unusual flight patterns, a flare-up in a region you care about — it sends you a tiered alert. You can also text it commands from your phone, like asking for a morning briefing or a quick sweep of a topic.
Hook it to an AI model and it can even suggest connections between signals — a drought here, a shipping delay there, a price move somewhere else.
Why a founder might care
Geopolitical monitoring tools that do even half of this cost hundreds of dollars a month. This is free and private. If your business touches imports, exports, commodities, or anything affected by world events, having this running in the background is quietly useful.
Words worth knowing
OSINT — Open Source Intelligence. Gathering information from public sources (news, satellites, government databases) rather than secret ones. Journalists and analysts use it constantly.
Self-hosted — You run the software on your own machine, not on someone else's server. Your data stays yours.
Docker — A tool that packages software so it installs in one step, no technical setup needed. Think of it like a pre-assembled flat-pack that builds itself.
LLM — Large Language Model. The kind of AI behind ChatGPT or Claude — good at reading information and summarising it in plain language.
Worth asking yourself: what's one thing happening in the world that, if you'd noticed it two weeks earlier, would have changed a decision you made?
Try it
You need Node 22+. The first sweep across 27 sources takes about a minute.
- Clone the repo:
git clone https://github.com/calesthio/Crucix.git - Move in and install:
cd Crucix && npm install - Set up env vars:
cp .env.example .envand add your Telegram bot token - Start the dashboard:
npm run dev - Open
http://localhost:3117and watch the live feeds populate