// the find
FrigadeHQ/trench
Trench — Open-Source Analytics Infrastructure. A single production-ready Docker image built on ClickHouse, Kafka, and Node.js for tracking events. Easily build product analytics dashboards, LLM RAGs, observability platforms, or any other analytics product.
Trench is a self-hosted event ingestion and analytics pipeline that puts Kafka in front of ClickHouse, wrapped in a NestJS API. It exposes a Segment-compatible HTTP API so you can swap it in without rewriting your tracking calls. Aimed at teams who want PostHog/Mixpanel-style event infrastructure without the SaaS bill or the privacy tradeoffs.
Segment API compatibility is the real selling point — track/identify/group calls work without client changes. The single Docker image bundling Kafka, ClickHouse, and the Node server is genuinely convenient for getting started; the stateless compose variant suggests they've thought about production separation. The raw SQL query endpoint is honest and useful — no fake abstraction layer between you and ClickHouse. Kafka SSL/SASL configuration is thorough, with compose files for both SASL-only and SSL+SASL scenarios.
The queries endpoint accepts raw SQL strings from API callers — the README example sends a public-key-authenticated request with `SELECT COUNT(*) FROM events WHERE userId = ...`, which is a SQL injection surface unless there's parameterization hiding off-screen. Only 63 forks and 1,640 stars for a repo built on Kafka means the operational burden (Kafka is not a small thing to run) lands entirely on you with a thin community. No built-in dashboard — the Grafana guide is the answer, which means you're wiring up another system before you see any charts. Last push was April 2026 but the issue tracker and changelog activity are sparse, so it's unclear whether this is stable-and-done or quietly stalling.