Custom app stores

Companion Hub can hold more than one app store, and Settings → App Stores lists the ones you have. What you can do there is narrower than it looks, so this page starts with the part that decides whether the rest is useful to you.

What your Hub actually has

Every Hub registers one store for itself: CI Marketplace, slug ci-marketplace. It is not a Git repository — it is an API-backed store (type: ci_cloud_api) pointed at CI Cloud, registered automatically at startup and kept in sync from there. You do not add it and should not try to remove it.

Git-repository stores — a repo with an apps/ directory, one folder per app, cloned into <ROOT_FOLDER_HOST>/repos/ — are still supported by the sync code, which refers to them as legacy git stores. They are how stores worked before CI Marketplace. Nothing in the dashboard creates one.

The two store types the sync code knows about, and how each reaches the App Store view:

flowchart TD
    CC["CI Cloud"] -->|"type: ci_cloud_api<br/>registered at startup, kept in sync"| M["CI Marketplace<br/>slug ci-marketplace"]
    G["Repository with an apps/ directory<br/>one folder per app"] -->|"cloned into<br/>ROOT_FOLDER_HOST/repos/"| L["Legacy store"]
    M --> V["App Store view"]
    L -.->|"still synced if present;<br/>nothing in the dashboard creates one"| V

What you can still do in Settings → App Stores

Deleting is refused more often than you would expect

Two rules are enforced by the server, and both return an error rather than doing anything partial:

• “There are installed apps that belong to this appstore. Please uninstall them first” — a store with any installed app cannot be deleted. Uninstall its apps first.
• “You cannot delete the last appstore” — your Hub must always have at least one.

Disabling a store is the lighter option: its apps drop out of the App Store view without touching anything you have already installed.

Both rules the server enforces before a store is removed, and the lighter alternative:

flowchart TD
    accTitle: Deleting a store: both checks must pass, or disable it instead
    D["Delete a store"] --> Q1{"Installed apps<br/>from this store?"}
    Q1 -->|"yes"| E1["Refused: uninstall them first"]
    Q1 -->|"no"| Q2{"Last store<br/>on this Hub?"}
    Q2 -->|"yes"| E2["Refused: you cannot delete<br/>the last appstore"]
    Q2 -->|"no"| OK["Store deleted"]
    D -.->|"lighter option"| X["Disable instead: apps leave the<br/>store view, installed apps untouched"]

The API still exists

The Hub backend still serves POST /api/marketplace/create (session-authenticated, same as the rest of the marketplace routes), so the capability was not removed from the server — only the way in from the dashboard was. It is undocumented here on purpose: it is not a supported user-facing path, its request shape is not guaranteed, and nothing in the UI helps you if a store created that way misbehaves.

If you were trying to test an app before submitting it

That is the usual reason people come looking for this page, and the custom-store route is not available for it. Publish your first app covers what to do instead.