monolith-engine
Advanced tools
███╗ ███╗ ██████╗ ███╗ ██╗ ██████╗ ██╗ ██╗████████╗██╗ ██╗ ████╗ ████║██╔═══██╗████╗ ██║██╔═══██╗██║ ██║╚══██╔══╝██║ ██║ ██╔████╔██║██║ ██║██╔██╗ ██║██║ ██║██║ ██║ ██║ ███████║ ██║╚██╔╝██║██║ ██║██║╚██╗██║██║ ██║██║ ██║ ██║ ██╔══██║ ██║ ╚═╝ ██║╚██████╔╝██║ ╚████║╚██████╔╝███████╗██║ ██║ ██║ ██║ ╚═╝ ╚═╝ ╚═════╝ ╚═╝ ╚═══╝ ╚═════╝ ╚══════╝╚═╝ ╚═╝ ╚═╝ ╚═╝
YOUR SERVER. NO MIDDLEMEN.
The deployment control plane for developers who already have a server and the skill to SSH into it. Flat pricing that never moves with usage, no execution-time ceiling, and one login that manages every server and project you own.
📍 Current status: early access, single-maintainer project. The core deploy/rollback/database/migration pipeline is real and working (see Features) — this isn't vaporware with a landing page. TLS between the CLI and your server is not wired up yet, so don't route sensitive production credentials through it (see Known Limitations) — that's the top priority before this is pushed on anyone harder than "try it and tell me what breaks."
You, if: you're comfortable with git, a terminal, and SSH-ing into a box you own or rent — a $5 Hetzner VPS, a spare machine, whatever — and you'd rather point a real deploy pipeline at it than pay platform markup or hand-roll docker build + nginx + cert renewal yourself every time you ship.
Not you, if: you have zero infrastructure literacy and want something that requires no server of your own — Monolith still assumes you own or can rent a machine and can SSH into it. That's a deliberate line, not an oversight: the onboarding genuinely requires it.
Two shapes of user this tends to fit well in practice:
If you're on a static site or a low-traffic app with no real cost problem, or you need enterprise SLAs and 24/7 on-call today, Monolith isn't trying to be the right tool for that yet.
Platform egress pricing carries a markup of 100x or more over what bandwidth actually costs on raw infrastructure — commonly cited around $0.15/GB in Vercel overages versus roughly $1/TB-equivalent on Hetzner. That gap is invisible on a small app. It stops being invisible the moment your app serves real media, runs an AI-generation pipeline, or just has a good week — "surprise $700 bill" and "surprise $23,000 bill" are both things that have actually happened to real people, not hypotheticals.
Serverless execution limits are the other half of the same problem: a 300–800 second ceiling on how long a single request can run, which is exactly why a small industry of point-solutions exists purely to work around it while staying on the platform. Monolith's containers are always-on — there is no ceiling to work around.
The comparison that actually matters isn't Monolith vs. a cheaper subscription — it's Monolith vs. hiring a DevOps engineer. A fully-loaded first-year platform engineer runs anywhere from $180K to $390K once you count recruiting, onboarding, and ramp risk. Most teams under ~3 engineers shouldn't make that hire yet — the standard advice is that one generalist just handles deploys manually (SSH, docker build, hand-edited nginx, manual cert renewal) until the team is bigger. Monolith is what that manual process looks like automated: flat pricing, one login, git push to ship, without needing the hire or the DevOps learning curve to get there.
Monolith doesn't try to be a bigger, better Vercel, and it isn't trying to out-feature Coolify either — Coolify is free, mature, and does more today. Monolith is the narrower thing: point it at a server you already have and get a real deploy pipeline back, without the usage-based billing surprises of the hosted platforms or the "now you're the one keeping the platform itself alive" tax of running your own PaaS from scratch.
# 1. Install the CLI
npm i monolith-engine
# 2. Authenticate — either paste a token from your dashboard...
monolith login --token <YOUR_PAT> --url <YOUR_DASHBOARD_URL>
# ...or skip the token and let it open a browser instead:
monolith login
# 3. Register a server you own (name, public IP, agent key)
monolith server:add
# 4. Initialize your project and tether it to that server
monolith init my-app
# 5. Ship it
monolith deploy
Every git push after that redeploys automatically if you run monolith github:connect once.
Run monolith guide at any point for a full interactive walkthrough with a command-by-command failure-diagnostics reference — it's built into the CLI itself.
npm i monolith-engine
Requires Node 18+ and a server you can SSH into (any provider — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, a home server, whatever you've got).
init recognizes Prisma, patch-package, and Puppeteer in your package.json and offers to wire the right postinstall step and Docker build-cache config for youmonolith guide walks through setup and diagnoses failures per commandmonolith login — authenticate the CLI with your account# Manual: paste a Personal Access Token from Settings → Personal Access Tokens
monolith login --token <PAT> --url <YOUR_DASHBOARD_URL>
# Or: browser-based, no token to copy — opens a loopback OAuth tab and
# syncs every profile/token on your account in one shot
monolith login
Either way, credentials are stored locally in ~/.monolith/auth.json (mode 0600). Every other command reads this file automatically — you only do this once per machine. Use the manual --token form on headless/SSH sessions where a browser can't open.
monolith generate:token <name> / list:token / switch — manage multiple profilesmonolith generate:token work # forge a new PAT, save it as profile "work", activate it
monolith list:token # list every token on your account (masked)
monolith switch # interactively pick which saved profile is active
Useful if you manage more than one workspace, client, or environment from the same machine — every command runs against whichever profile is currently active.
monolith server:add — register a server you ownmonolith server:add
Interactive prompt for a name, public IPv4 address, and the agent's API key. This is what makes Monolith bring-your-own-cloud — no provider-specific integration, just an IP.
monolith init <project-name> — set up a projectmonolith init my-app
Detects your framework, injects any needed build scripts, and lets you tether the project to one of your registered servers. If it finds Prisma, patch-package, or Puppeteer in your package.json, it'll offer to add the right postinstall command and generate a nixpacks.toml so the Docker build cache doesn't silently drop the folders those tools need.
monolith deploy — ship the current directorymonolith deploy
Packs the project, uploads it to the tethered server, and runs a health-checked blue/green traffic switch. No downtime if the new container passes its health check; nothing changes if it doesn't.
monolith rollback — undo the last deploymonolith rollback
Flips traffic back to the previous container instantly. No rebuild.
monolith db:create <name> — provision a databasemonolith db:create <db-name>
Choose Postgres, MySQL, Redis, or MongoDB. The connection string is auto-injected into your project's secrets vault.
monolith db:migrate — migrate an existing database onto Monolithmonolith db:migrate
Detects databases already attached to your project, walks you through picking a destination, then prompts (input hidden) for your existing provider's connection URI and the destination's Monolith URI. Runs the migration on a short-lived worker and streams its logs live so you can watch it happen. Keep your old database running until you've verified the new one — this doesn't touch the source.
If you're migrating from Supabase, use the Connection Pooler URL (port 5432), not the direct database URL — Monolith checks for this and will tell you if you've pasted the wrong one.
⚠️ Given the TLS caveat above, avoid running this against production credentials over an untrusted network until TLS lands — treat it as safe for a private network or a low-stakes migration for now.
monolith env:set / env:rm — manage secretsmonolith env:set
monolith env:rm
Interactively add or remove environment variables in the remote vault. Keys are auto-normalized to UPPERCASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES. Redeploy afterward for changes to take effect.
monolith github:connect — automatic deploy on pushmonolith github:connect
Registers a webhook on your GitHub repo pointing at your tethered server. Requires a GitHub PAT with repo and admin:repo_hook scopes.
monolith list / status / logs — see what's runningmonolith list # quick table of apps and databases
monolith status # full diagnostic: containers, vault, rollback targets, db health
monolith logs # stream build or runtime logs live
monolith destroy / app:purge / db:destroy — tear things downmonolith destroy [project-id] # delete a project and everything on it
monolith app:purge [container-name] # remove just the app container, keep the db
monolith db:destroy <container-name> # delete a specific database
All three require typing an exact confirmation string — intentional, not a bug, so a fat-fingered Enter can't delete production.
monolith guide — interactive walkthroughmonolith guide
An animated, in-terminal guide covering login, multi-profile auth, the full pipeline, and an expandable command reference with likely failure reasons for every command above. Type a command name or number to expand it, q to exit.
| Monolith | Vercel / Railway | Coolify | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Your own server | Their infrastructure | Your own server |
| Pricing model | Flat, no usage-based egress | Usage-based (bandwidth, functions) — Railway's own users cite billing surprises as its biggest complaint | Free (self-managed) |
| Execution model | Always-on containers, no timeout | Serverless functions, 300–800s execution ceiling | Always-on containers |
| Setup | CLI-first, a few commands | Instant, zero setup | Full web dashboard, larger surface area |
| Ongoing ops burden | You manage the box, Monolith manages the deploy | None — fully managed | You manage everything, including the platform's own upkeep |
| Best fit | Devs who already have a server and want git-push simplicity without becoming their own devops team | Teams who want zero infrastructure thinking and can absorb usage pricing | Teams comfortable owning the whole self-hosting stack full-time |
Coolify is free, mature, and does more than Monolith does today — if you want the full self-hosted platform experience and don't mind managing it, it's a genuinely good option. Monolith exists for the narrower case in between: you want the git-push-and-forget experience, without the usage-billing anxiety of a hosted platform or the ongoing time cost of running your own PaaS.
Being upfront about this matters more than looking finished:
db:migrate with production credentials — over this until it's resolved. This is the current #1 priority.db:migrate is built and tested against Postgres. Other engines will likely work but haven't been exercised the same way yet.None of these are secret — they're the current top-of-list priorities, in that order.
db:migrate responsibly)This is early and small — one maintainer, built and used on real projects before being offered to anyone else. Issues and PRs are welcome, but please open an issue to discuss first for anything beyond a small fix — the roadmap above is the current source of truth for direction.
MIT — see LICENSE.
Let's deploy your dream project.
FAQs
Command line deployment tool
The npm package monolith-engine receives a total of 2 weekly downloads. As such, monolith-engine popularity was classified as not popular.
We found that monolith-engine demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
Security News
Agent Baseline’s new reference architecture shows how to secure software factories with four boundaries enforced outside the AI agent.
Security News
arXiv now limits authors to two submissions a month as AI slop overwhelms moderators, delays good papers, and sparks debate over applying the limit to everyone.
Research
/Security News
A new GhostAction wave hits hundreds of GitHub repos, expanding CI/CD secret theft to cloud and AI credentials in source code and git history.