monolith-engine
Advanced tools
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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.
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