Introduction
What is StackShift
LiveA precise description of StackShift as it exists today: a self-hosted application platform control plane for deploying and operating workloads across connected nodes.
Goal
Understand the platform model before you start reading deployment or operations guides.
Current status
This area is documented as current, user-reliable behavior.
Workflow
- 1Think of StackShift as the control plane, not the machine that runs your workloads.
- 2Connect one or more nodes with the agent so StackShift has somewhere to place workloads.
- 3Use projects for application/image deployments and stacks for Compose and service-style workloads.
- 4Use templates when you want a versioned, curated stack blueprint with safer lifecycle controls.
- 5Use operations, backup, and recovery surfaces to monitor and maintain what is running.
How to think about the product
StackShift is not a generic cloud account wrapper and it is not just a Docker UI. It is a platform control plane that coordinates deployments, health, routing, and recovery across machines you connect to it.
The product is structured around the workload shape you are trying to run. That distinction matters because different surfaces carry different lifecycle, observability, and recovery behavior.
Primary product surfaces
- Projects: application-style deployments from GitHub or Docker images.
- Stacks: multi-container and service-style workloads defined with Compose.
- Templates: curated, versioned blueprints that deploy as stacks.
- Nodes: machines running the agent and hosting workloads.
- Databases: managed database resources tracked separately from stacks.
- Operations: health, alerts, services, node state, and recovery visibility.
Additional product areas
Domains and email, team collaboration, billing, notifications, global settings, and AI diagnosis all exist as first-class product areas in the current platform.
Expected result
You can explain the difference between the control plane, nodes, projects, stacks, templates, databases, and operations.