Deploying

The reference deployment targets Google Cloud Run via Terraform. Nothing in the platform requires GCP — the services are plain containers — but this is the path that is actually in production.

What gets created

Component	Resource
cavs-api	Cloud Run service, public (it does its own Firebase auth, so IAM invoker is allUsers)
cavs-worker	Cloud Run service, internal-only, min = max = 1, cpu_idle = false — an always-on Pub/Sub puller
cavs-web	Cloud Run service, public nginx serving the SPA and reverse-proxying /api
Events	Pub/Sub topic cavs.events + subscription cavs.worker
Secrets	Secret Manager — one secret per sensitive variable
Images	Artifact Registry repository cavs

External, not provisioned by Terraform: MongoDB (Atlas) and object storage (Cloudflare R2 or any S3). Their credentials are stored as secrets.

Prerequisites

gcloud auth login
gcloud config set project <your-project>
gcloud auth application-default login    # Terraform uses ADC

Caution

gcloud auth login and Application Default Credentials are separate. Without the second command Terraform fails with an invalid_rapt reauth error. This catches everyone once.

You need roles/owner (or equivalent) on the project for the first run.

Configure

cd cavs-node/terraform
cp terraform.tfvars.example terraform.tfvars

Required before a deploy can succeed:

Variable	Notes
secrets.MONGODB_URI	Your Atlas connection string
secrets.STORAGE_ENCRYPTION_KEY	openssl rand -base64 32
secrets.SESSION_TOKEN_SECRET	openssl rand -base64 32
s3_account_id	Cloudflare account id
secrets.S3_ACCESS_KEY / S3_SECRET_KEY	R2 API token, scoped to the bucket
firebase_project_id	Must match the web build
app_base_url	The origin users sign in on

The API refuses to boot without storage configured

config.validate() requires S3/R2 in production, so terraform apply of cavs-api fails until s3_account_id and the access keys are filled in. If a first deploy fails at container startup, check those before anything else.

Secrets are a map, and empty values are invalid

var.secrets maps ENV_VAR_NAME → value; each becomes a Secret Manager secret wired as a Cloud Run secret env var. Secret Manager rejects empty strings — omit unused keys rather than setting them to "".

Deploy

cd cavs-node/terraform
./deploy.sh

Four phases:

1. Bootstrap — targeted apply of the required APIs and Artifact Registry.

2. Build — gcloud builds submit builds the images via cloudbuild.yaml, with cavs-node/ as the build source. One Go Dockerfile parameterized by --build-arg SERVICE=api|worker; the web Dockerfile bakes the public VITE_FIREBASE_* build args. cavs-node/.gcloudignore keeps the upload small.

3. Apply — the full Terraform apply.

4. Wire URLs — captures the live service URLs into urls.auto.tfvars and re-applies. (A Cloud Run service can’t reference its own URL, and api ↔ web would cycle.)

deploy.sh builds your working tree, not a git ref

gcloud builds submit "$ROOT" uploads the local working tree of the cavs-node/ package ($ROOT resolves to the package, so cavs-docs/ and .git/ are never uploaded). A clean git status does not guarantee the tree matches the ref you think you’re deploying — and code that exists only in another branch’s tree gets silently included or excluded.

This has already caused one bad production deploy: a worker health server existed only in an uncommitted branch tree. Deploying from clean main produced a worker with no HTTP surface, its startup probe failed, the new revision never became Ready, and Cloud Run kept serving the stale revision — so invitations, usage reconciliation and GC quietly ran old code for a while.

Before every deploy: confirm the working tree is exactly the ref you intend.

The worker needs an HTTP surface

cloud_run.tf gives cavs-worker an HTTP startup and liveness probe on :8080. The worker therefore serves /healthz and /readyz on $PORT. Remove that and the revision never becomes Ready — while Cloud Run keeps the previous one running, which makes the failure easy to miss.

Custom domain

Map your domain to the cavs-web service (done outside Terraform, in the Cloud Run console or with gcloud). The web tier reverse-proxies /api to the API service, so the dashboard and API share one origin.

Then set app_base_url to that origin.

app_base_url must win over the generated URL

deploy.sh writes discovered service URLs into urls.auto.tfvars, and auto.tfvars overrides terraform.tfvars. Without a guard, your custom app_base_url gets reset to the run.app URL on every deploy — which breaks every invitation link, because Firebase persists auth per origin.

The current deploy.sh guards this: when app_base_url is set in terraform.tfvars it is omitted from the generated urls.auto.tfvars. Verify that guard survives any edit you make to the script.

Health checks

Check	From	Notes
/readyz	anywhere	Pings MongoDB. Use this externally.
/healthz	container probes only	Google’s front end reserves this path and answers it itself, so an external request returns a GFE 404 that says nothing about your service. Cloud Run’s own probes hit the container directly, so /healthz probes still work.

curl -sS https://your-domain/readyz          # → ready
curl -sS https://your-domain/api/v1/plans    # → the plan catalogue

Post-deploy verification

1. All three services report Ready = True.
2. GET /readyz returns 200 — this proves database connectivity end to end.
3. GET /api/v1/plans returns the catalogue.
4. The dashboard loads and sign-in works on the canonical origin.
5. An invitation email arrives with a link on the canonical origin.
6. A test push registers: the generation bumps and objects appear.
7. Metrics are arriving in your monitoring backend.
8. The billing webhook endpoint is registered and reachable.

Known deployment gotchas

Symptom	Cause
invalid_rapt from Terraform	Missing gcloud auth application-default login
PERMISSION_DENIED from gcloud builds submit right after enabling the API	IAM propagation lag. Retry.
External /healthz returns 404	Google’s front end reserves the path. Use /readyz.
cavs-api container won’t start	S3/R2 not configured — the API refuses to boot without it
Secret Manager rejects a secret	Empty-string value. Omit the key.
Worker revision never Ready	No HTTP health server on $PORT
Invitation links point at run.app	app_base_url overwritten by urls.auto.tfvars
Docker build fails on cache mounts	cloudbuild.yaml needs DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 per step
A stale invitation looks broken after a deploy	Check its created_at — it may predate the fix

Other platforms

Nothing is Cloud Run-specific beyond the Terraform module. The services are plain containers:

Requirement	Notes
cavs-api	HTTP, public, horizontally scalable, stateless
cavs-worker	Always-on, one instance is enough to start; needs an HTTP health surface if your platform probes
cavs-web	Static SPA + a reverse proxy to the API on the same origin
MongoDB	Replica set. Managed (Atlas) recommended.
Object storage	Any S3-compatible endpoint with Range GET and multipart
Pub/Sub	Google Cloud Pub/Sub, or the emulator

Kubernetes, ECS or plain Docker Compose all work. Keep the worker singleton-ish until you’ve read Scaling — every stage is idempotent, so multiple workers are safe, but that’s a capacity decision, not a correctness one.

Terraform state

Terraform state and terraform.tfvars contain secrets. Both are gitignored in the reference setup. Use a remote backend with encryption and locking for anything beyond a single operator.

Next

• Configuration reference — every variable and the production checklist.
• Observability — dashboards and alerts.
• Scaling — where the limits are.