Introduction

Tether is free, open-source IT asset management purpose-built for Managed Service Providers. Track every device across every client from a single installation, give each client their own branded portal, and manage who has what — with a complete checkout history, warranty tracking, and QR labels included.

What is Tether?

Tether is a web-based platform that runs on your server (or ours at atechsolutions.org) and is accessed through a web browser. There is no executable file to download and run — it is a server-side application.

The core design decision that separates Tether from tools like Snipe-IT is multi-tenancy. One Tether installation serves your entire MSP. Each client organisation lives in a completely isolated space with its own assets, users, categories, and locations. A client user logging into acme.atechsolutions.org can only ever see Acme Corp's data — never another client's.

Key concepts

MSP

The top-level account. An MSP admin logs in to the root domain (atechsolutions.org) and sees all client organisations from a unified dashboard. MSP staff users have is_msp_staff = true and have no tenant restriction.

Tenant

A client organisation. Every record in Tether — assets, users, categories, locations, people, requests — belongs to exactly one tenant. Tenants are completely isolated at the database query level; there is no way for a client user to read another tenant's data, even through the API.

Each tenant has a slug — a short identifier that becomes their subdomain. A tenant with slug acme is accessed at acme.atechsolutions.org (or acme.yourdomain.com for self-hosted installs with a custom BASE_DOMAIN).

Asset

A physical device or piece of equipment tracked in the system. Each asset has a unique asset tag within its tenant, a status, and optional metadata including serial number, purchase cost, warranty expiry date, and notes. The four asset statuses are:

Roles and permissions

Access control in Tether has two layers: roles (named presets) and per-user permission overrides on top of those roles. This lets you give an exec full read access while a manager can check out but not delete — all within the same role tier.

Architecture

Tether is a single application with no microservices or external dependencies beyond a database:

The application determines the active tenant from the HTTP Host header on every request. A request to acme.atechsolutions.org is automatically scoped to the Acme tenant — no session switching required.

Deployment options

Open source

Tether is released under the MIT licence. The full source code is available on GitHub. Self-hosted installs have no asset limits, no feature restrictions, and no billing. The hosted SaaS version exists for MSPs who would rather not manage infrastructure.

The codebase that runs at atechsolutions.org is identical to what you can download and run yourself — DEPLOYMENT_MODE=saas is the only variable that enables billing tier enforcement.

File structure

Tether follows a standard Python project layout:

textCopy
tether/
├── backend/
│   ├── main.py               # FastAPI app — mounts all routers and serves frontend
│   ├── security.py           # JWT auth, bcrypt, tenant resolution from Host header
│   ├── billing.py            # Tier definitions and limit enforcement
│   ├── db/
│   │   └── database.py       # Engine, session, seed logic
│   ├── models/
│   │   └── models.py         # SQLAlchemy ORM models
│   ├── schemas/
│   │   └── schemas.py        # Pydantic request/response schemas
│   └── routers/
│       ├── auth.py           # Login, /me, change-password
│       ├── assets.py         # Asset CRUD, checkout/in, QR, CSV
│       ├── categories.py
│       ├── locations.py
│       ├── users.py          # Employees (people assets are assigned to)
│       ├── user_mgmt.py      # User accounts and permission overrides
│       ├── tenants.py        # Tenant CRUD and custom domains
│       ├── dashboard.py      # Stats endpoint (MSP aggregate + tenant-scoped)
│       ├── invites.py        # Invite token generation and acceptance
│       ├── requests.py       # Asset requests
│       ├── billing_router.py # Usage status and tier management
│       └── demo.py           # Demo reset (only mounted in demo mode)
├── frontend/
│   ├── templates/
│   │   └── index.html        # SPA shell — loads all JS and CSS
│   └── static/
│       ├── css/style.css
│       └── js/
│           ├── app.js        # API layer, auth, router, helpers
│           ├── views.js      # Login, shell, MSP dashboard, client management
│           ├── views2.js     # Assets, categories, locations, employees, settings
│           ├── icons.js      # Inline SVG icon set
│           └── chart.umd.js  # Chart.js (vendored — no CDN required)
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
├── requirements.txt
├── install.sh
├── .env.example
└── .env.demo

Getting help

If you run into an issue not covered by these docs, you have several options:

• Check Troubleshooting — common errors with exact error messages and their fixes
• GitHub Issues — github.com/atechlab-am/tether/issues — search before opening
• Email support — [email protected] — we respond same day