What is Walis
Walis is a CI/CD server for a single machine. It runs your shell scripts on a schedule, on a webhook, or when you press a button, and it keeps the logs.
That is deliberately less than Jenkins or Woodpecker do. The difference is what it does not require.
The trade Walis makes
| Jenkins | Woodpecker | Walis | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Needs a Git forge | no | yes | no |
| Needs containers | no | in practice yes | optional |
| Needs a runtime on agents | JVM | container runtime | nothing |
| Pipeline lives in | UI or Jenkinsfile | repo YAML only | UI, exportable to JSON |
| Plugin isolation | none | container | JavaScript sandbox |
Jenkins can do anything because its plugins run unsandboxed in the same JVM — that is also why one bad plugin takes down the controller. Woodpecker gets isolation for free because every step is a container — and pays for it by requiring a forge and a container runtime.
Walis takes a third route: it limits what a plugin may output rather than where it runs. A plugin returns a shell snippet, which you can read before installing it.
What it is not
- Not a cluster. One machine, SQLite, no HA. Remote agents exist, but the server is a single process.
- Not a Git host. Point it at a repo with a webhook, or run jobs that have no repo at all.
- Not a container platform. It runs shell. If you want containers, your script can start them.