Managoat

Managoat is the hosted Fountain. Fountain is the open-source engine, and its name is on the CLI, the API, the SDK and this manual. Everything here applies to Managoat unless a page says it is for a self-hosted server.

Stripe

Optional. Stripe is the till: it takes the payment for a credit pack and tells Fountain about refunds and disputes. Nothing else. Billing is off by default (CREDITS_ENABLED=false), and that is the right setting for most self-hosted instances. Set this up only if you run Fountain commercially.

At a glance
Required No, and off by default.
Provider Stripe.
Env vars CREDITS_ENABLED, STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET
Webhook <PUBLIC_URL>/api/stripe/webhook
Without it No way to buy credit. Admin grants still work.

The provider side

  1. An API key, from Developers → API keys, as STRIPE_SECRET_KEY.

  2. A webhook endpoint pointed at <PUBLIC_URL>/api/stripe/webhook, subscribed to these three events.

    • checkout.session.completed, which adds the credit a pack paid for.
    • charge.refunded, which removes the refunded amount.
    • charge.dispute.created, which removes the disputed amount.

    Its signing secret becomes STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET.

You create no product and no price. Each pack is a one-time Checkout with the amount in the session, from CREDIT_PACKS_CENTS.

Use test-mode keys everywhere, except on a production instance that takes real money.

Env vars

Variable Effect
CREDITS_ENABLED false by default. true turns credits on.
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY The API key.
STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET Verifies a webhook signature. Fountain rejects a bad signature with a 400.

Behavior worth knowing

  • Fountain creates the Stripe customer at the first pack purchase, not at signup. An account that never buys is never a Stripe customer.
  • Webhook processing is idempotent. Fountain claims each event ID in a dedup table, and adds a pack once however many times Stripe delivers the event. A transient failure returns a 500, so that Stripe delivers it again.
  • A refund removes the refunded amount from the balance, and the balance can go below zero. A won dispute puts nothing back by itself. Add it by hand from the admin panel, or with POST /api/admin/users/:id/credits.
  • A comped account cannot buy. It has nothing to pay for.

Verify

The delivery log for the webhook endpoint in the Stripe dashboard must show 2xx responses. Buy the smallest pack with a test card, and the balance on /account/billing rises by that amount when the webhook lands.