Self-hosting with Docker

Classmoji ships a production Dockerfile for every app, so you can build and run it yourself. What it does not ship yet is a single turnkey docker compose up that brings up the whole stack. You either run each image with your own orchestration, or use the Fly.io setup the project already includes. This page is honest about both.

What ships in the repo

• A production Dockerfile per app: webapp, slides, pages, hook-station, site, and ai-agent. Each builds on Node 22 Alpine, generates the Prisma client at build time, and builds the app.
• A root docker-compose.yml, for local development only. It runs Postgres, plus an optional ai-agent service behind a profile. It does not run the webapp, slides, pages, hook-station, or site. npm run db:start is just docker compose up -d.

There is no compose or Kubernetes file that wires all the services together for production. You bring your own.

The services in a full deployment

• Postgres: the only datastore
• webapp: the main app
• slides and pages: companion apps for presentations and content
• hook-station: receives Github and Stripe webhooks
• site: this marketing and docs site (optional)
• ai-agent: optional, only needed for AI features. It lives in a private module and may be unavailable to you.

Database

Postgres is the only database. For local work, npm run db:start brings up the dev Postgres defined in docker-compose.yml. For a real deployment, point DATABASE_URL at a managed Postgres. The hosted version runs on Neon.

Migrations

Each image generates the Prisma client at build time, but you still need to apply migrations to your database. Run prisma migrate deploy against DATABASE_URL before serving traffic. In the hosted setup, the webapp runs migrate deploy automatically as a release step on every deploy, so you don’t have to do it by hand there.

Building an image yourself

Build any app from the repo root, passing the app’s Dockerfile:

docker build -f apps/webapp/Dockerfile -t classmoji-webapp .

Then run it with the environment variables that app needs. Because there’s no bundled orchestration, you’re responsible for networking the services together, supplying secrets, and putting a reverse proxy in front. Compose, Kubernetes, or a PaaS all work.

The supported path today: Fly.io

The project includes a fly.toml and a deploy script for each app, and this is the most worn path. With the Fly CLI installed and authenticated:

npm run fly:webapp
npm run fly:slides
npm run fly:pages
npm run fly:hooks
npm run fly:site
npm run fly:ai

The webapp’s release command runs database migrations on each deploy.

Configuration

Every service reads its config from environment variables. See Environment variables for the full list and which are required for which feature.