Architecture at a glance

cellp is a private Workers control plane on your hardware: external CI (or cellp dev) registers versions; each ready version gets an isolated data bucket and a celld process; HTTP traffic enters through a gateway that picks the version from the Host header.

Components

Piece	Role
cellpd	Control plane: REST API, job orchestrator, gateway, SQLite registry
celld	Cloudflare Workers–compatible runtime (maintained in the cellp repo as celld/); one process per ready version
Object storage	Artifacts, per-version celld data, and offshoot blobs — RustFS in Docker/Compose; embedded local S3 with cellp dev
offshoot	Copy-on-write App + Data branches (SQLite export/import, S3-backed in production)
Dashboard	Vite + React SPA; talks only to the API on :8790 — never to celld ports or S3

Workers code and bindings are declared in wrangler; the platform does not host Git or run your CI.

Default ports (local)

Port	Service
8787	Gateway — preview and production HTTP (route by Host)
8790	REST API, admin operations, Dashboard backend, /metrics
8792+	celld upstreams (one port per ready version, assigned by cellpd)
5190	Dashboard dev server (pnpm --filter cellp-dashboard dev)
9000 / 19000	S3 API — RustFS in the contributor stack, or embedded store with cellp dev

See Local stack for script names and cellp dev for the no-Docker path.

Request path

Browser / curl
  → your TLS load balancer (optional, you operate)
  → cellpd gateway :8787  (Host selects project + version)
  → celld for that version

Admin and automation:

Dashboard / curl / CI
  → cellpd API :8790  (Bearer deploy or admin token)
  → orchestrator spawns celld, runs offshoot/D1 jobs, updates registry

Path-shaped URLs /{project}/{version}/ are deprecated; use Host-based preview and prod URLs from the API or Dashboard. Details: Preview & production.

Laptop vs production-shaped

	cellp dev	Docker Compose / VM
Object storage	Embedded S3 under ~/.cellp	RustFS
offshoot store	Local directory tier	S3 (OFFSHOOT_STORE, e.g. s3://cellp-offshoot)
Goal	Fast product loop	Same layout as a serious self-host

The contributor local stack (./dev/scripts/up.sh) uses Docker RustFS on a laptop. Offshoot may use a local directory tier there, while production Compose keeps branches on S3 (OFFSHOOT_STORE). Gateway behavior is still Host ingress in both cases. For a VM-shaped deploy, start with Self-hosting.

What cellp does not include

No managed accounts, DNS, TLS certificates, WAF, or global edge PoPs — you terminate TLS and protect admin surfaces. No PostgreSQL, Caddy, or Forgejo as platform dependencies. See Limits for honesty about single-node registry and roadmap items.

Related

• How it works
• Install · Quick start
• Operator journey