life-my--midst--in

Self-Hosting Guide

Deploy in-midst-my-life on your own infrastructure with these options.

Quick Deploy Options

Platform Deploy Button Free Tier Notes
Railway Deploy on Railway 500 hrs/mo API + Orchestrator
Render Deploy to Render 750 hrs/mo Full stack
Vercel Deploy with Vercel Unlimited Frontend only

Full Stack Self-Hosting

Option 1: Docker Compose (Simplest)

Perfect for VPS deployment (DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS EC2, Hetzner).

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/4444J99/life-my--midst--in.git
cd life-my--midst--in

# 2. Copy environment template
cp infra/.env.example .env

# 3. Edit environment variables
nano .env
# Set: DATABASE_URL, REDIS_URL, JWT_SECRET, etc.

# 4. Start all services
docker-compose -f infra/docker-compose.prod.yml up -d

# 5. Run migrations
docker-compose -f infra/docker-compose.prod.yml exec api pnpm migrate

# 6. Verify deployment
curl http://localhost:3001/health

Minimum VPS Requirements:

Estimated Cost: $20-40/month (DigitalOcean, Linode, Hetzner)

Option 2: Free Tier Stack

Run the entire system on free tiers (with usage limits).

Service Provider Free Tier Limit Setup
Frontend Vercel Unlimited deploys Deploy
API Railway 500 hrs/mo Deploy
Database Neon 0.5GB storage Setup
Redis Upstash 10K commands/day Setup

Total Monthly Cost: $0 (with usage limits)

Platform-Specific Setup

Vercel (Frontend)

Deploy the Next.js frontend:

# Using Vercel CLI
npx vercel --prod

# Or connect GitHub repo at vercel.com

Environment Variables (Vercel Dashboard):

NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://your-api.railway.app
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...@neon.tech/midst

Railway (API + Orchestrator)

Deploy backend services:

  1. Go to railway.app/new
  2. Select “Deploy from GitHub repo”
  3. Choose life-my--midst--in
  4. Set service to apps/api (or apps/orchestrator)

Environment Variables:

DATABASE_URL=$
REDIS_URL=$
PORT=3001
NODE_ENV=production
JWT_SECRET=your-secret-key-min-32-chars

Neon Database

Free PostgreSQL with 0.5GB storage:

  1. Create account at neon.tech
  2. Create new project “in-midst-my-life”
  3. Copy connection string
  4. Run migrations:
# From local machine
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...@neon.tech/midst pnpm migrate

Upstash Redis

Free Redis with 10K commands/day:

  1. Create account at upstash.com
  2. Create new database
  3. Copy connection string (starts with rediss://)
  4. Add to environment variables

Kubernetes Deployment

For production-grade deployments, use the included Helm charts.

Prerequisites

Quick Deploy

# Add secrets
kubectl create secret generic inmidst-secrets \
  --from-literal=database-url='postgresql://...' \
  --from-literal=redis-url='redis://...' \
  --from-literal=jwt-secret='your-secret-key'

# Deploy with Helm
helm install inmidst ./infra/helm \
  --set global.domain=inmidst.example.com \
  --set postgres.enabled=false \  # Use managed database
  --set redis.enabled=false       # Use managed Redis

# Verify
kubectl get pods -l app.kubernetes.io/name=inmidst

Helm Values Reference

# values.yaml
global:
  domain: inmidst.example.com
  imageTag: latest

api:
  replicas: 2
  resources:
    requests:
      cpu: 100m
      memory: 256Mi
    limits:
      cpu: 500m
      memory: 512Mi

web:
  replicas: 2

orchestrator:
  replicas: 1

ingress:
  enabled: true
  className: nginx
  tls:
    enabled: true
    secretName: inmidst-tls

Environment Variables Reference

Required

Variable Description Example
DATABASE_URL PostgreSQL connection string postgresql://user:pass@host:5432/midst
REDIS_URL Redis connection string redis://localhost:6379
JWT_SECRET Secret for JWT signing (min 32 chars) your-super-secret-key-here-min-32

Optional

Variable Description Default
NODE_ENV Environment mode development
PORT API server port 3001
LOG_LEVEL Logging verbosity info
CORS_ORIGINS Allowed CORS origins *

Third-Party Services

Variable Description Required
SERPER_API_KEY Serper API for job search For Hunter Protocol
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY Stripe for payments For billing
GITHUB_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID GitHub OAuth For login
LINKEDIN_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID LinkedIn OAuth For login

Monitoring & Observability

Health Checks

# API health
curl https://your-api.example.com/health
# → {"status":"ok"}

# Readiness (checks dependencies)
curl https://your-api.example.com/ready
# → 200 OK (or 503 if dependencies down)

# Prometheus metrics
curl https://your-api.example.com/metrics

Logging

All services output structured JSON logs. Configure aggregation:

Docker Compose:

logging:
  driver: "json-file"
  options:
    max-size: "10m"
    max-file: "3"

Kubernetes: Use FluentD, Loki, or cloud provider logging.

Grafana Dashboard

Import the included dashboard:

# From infra/grafana/dashboards/
kubectl apply -f inmidst-dashboard.yaml

Security Checklist

Before deploying to production:

Troubleshooting

Database Connection Failed

# Test connection
psql $DATABASE_URL -c "SELECT 1"

# Check SSL mode (Neon requires SSL)
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://...?sslmode=require

Redis Connection Failed

# Test connection
redis-cli -u $REDIS_URL PING

# For Upstash (uses TLS)
REDIS_URL=rediss://...  # Note: rediss:// not redis://

Build Failures

# Clear cache and rebuild
pnpm clean
pnpm install
pnpm build

# Check Node version (requires 22+)
node --version

Memory Issues

If running on limited RAM (free tier):

# Reduce Node.js memory
NODE_OPTIONS="--max-old-space-size=512" pnpm start

Getting Help

Contributing

Found an issue with self-hosting? Contributions welcome!

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create a feature branch
  3. Submit a pull request

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

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