Gorse 0.5.11 on Ubuntu 24.04

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## Why This AMI Instead of Self-Deploying?

Gorse is an open source recommender system engine written in Go. You feed it users, items, and feedback through a clean REST API and it returns personalized recommendations - with popular and latest non-personalized fallbacks - all served from a single self-contained process. Deploying it yourself means installing the engine, provisioning a data and cache store, writing systemd units, standing up a reverse proxy, and generating secure credentials for an engine that ships wide open by default.

This AMI eliminates that effort entirely: a working, secured recommendation service is operational within minutes of launch, with no cluster to assemble, no external database or cache to provision, and no proxy to configure - backed by 24/7 expert support from cloudimg.

## Who This Is For

This AMI is built for backend engineers and product teams at startups and mid-size companies who need personalized recommendations without dedicating ML-ops resources. Whether you run an e-commerce catalog with tens of thousands of products, a content platform serving articles or videos, or a SaaS application that needs user-to-user or item-to-item similarity, this single-instance deployment handles the workload without requiring a dedicated data science team.

## Application Stack

The engine is installed as the official single all-in-one binary - master, server, and worker in one process - backed by an embedded SQLite data and cache store on the instance disk. There is no Redis and no separate database to run. It binds the loopback interface only, and an nginx reverse proxy (ready for your TLS certificate) is placed in front of it. systemd manages the service for automatic restarts and clean logging. It is a CPU-only engine with no GPU requirement and integrates with any application through its REST API and official client libraries.

## Secure By Default

The upstream engine ships with an empty API key and empty dashboard credentials, which leaves both the REST API and the admin dashboard wide open. This image never boots in that state:

• A unique API key, dashboard password, and admin key are generated on each instance's first boot and written to a root-only file
• The engine starts only after those secrets are in place, so every API request requires your key from the very first request
• There are no shared or default credentials and nothing usable is baked into the image
• The engine binds only to loopback and is reached exclusively through the nginx reverse proxy

## Ready To Use

Browse to the instance for the web dashboard, sign in with the generated credentials, and inspect your data, recommendations, and background training tasks with live charts and counts. Call the REST API with your key to insert users, items, and feedback, then retrieve personalized recommendations, item-to-item and user-to-user neighbors, session-based recommendations, and latest and popular lists - with categories and labels.

## Concrete Use-Case Example

An e-commerce team with a catalog of tens of thousands of products and thousands of daily active users can ingest purchase and click events via the REST API, let Gorse retrain in the background on a schedule, and serve next-product suggestions on product pages and in email campaigns - all from a single instance with no external dependencies.

## What You Avoid By Using This AMI

• Installing the engine and provisioning a data and cache store
• Writing and debugging systemd service units
• Standing up a reverse proxy in front of a loopback engine
• Turning on authentication that the software leaves off by default
• Generating and securely storing per-instance credentials
• Ongoing maintenance and security patching without expert guidance

## cloudimg Support

24/7 technical support by email and live chat with a one-hour average response for critical issues. Our engineers help with deployment, securing the API, enabling a real domain and CA-signed certificate, integrating your application through the REST API, and recommender tuning.

## Getting Started

1. Launch the AMI on your preferred instance type

2. SSH in and retrieve your generated API key and dashboard credentials from the root-only file

3. Open the web dashboard to verify the engine is running

4. Begin inserting users, items, and feedback via the REST API

5. Retrieve personalized recommendations within minutes

Gorse is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 and is a trademark of its respective owner. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.