Instances

We use the concept of Instance to refer approximately to an installation of Caido.

To be precise, an instance is the set of files contained in the the data location, thus you can have multiple Caido instances on one machine if you change the data path.

Why?

First, we have to go back on the fact that Caido is built around a client/server architecture. This means you can deploy the Caido CLI anywhere (like on VPS or on Docker). We thus need some form of access control to authenticate the client (Browser or Desktop Application) that connects to that server.

You can find all details in our guide on the topic, but in essence each instance is tied to your account so only you can access it (sharing will be added eventually). Each instance has a set of OAuth credentials given to it by our cloud service that it uses to identify itself when communicating with us.

Client Server Architecture

Desktop

When you use the Desktop Application, you will see by default a Local Instance. This means that you will spawn a Caido CLI process locally on the given port and with the default data path.

Desktop Application Instances

Local

You can add instances with the New instance, those can be other Local instances if you want to use another data path or port for example.

New local instance

Remote

They can also be Remote instances if you just want to connect to an existing Caido CLI running somewhere else.

New remote instance

Dashboard

To manage your instances, you can head over to the Dashboard.

WARN: If you delete an instance and try to log-in again, you will see the error "Login URL generation failed". You will need to reset the credentials.

Dashboard for instances