elitan
Joined 7 years ago
Karma
445
Submissions
137
Member since
Mar 17
https://x.com/elitasson
View on Hacker NewsRecent submissions
Comment · 8 months ago
Heroku's git-push-to-deploy was magic in 2012. Sad to see it go out like this.
I've been building Frost https://github.com/elitan/frost, open source and self-hosted. Same idea, git push to deploy, automatic SSL, custom domains, but on your own VPS. Docker-native, no vendor lock-in, no pricing surprises.
The angle that's a bit different: it's designed for AI coding agents. Simple config they write correctly, clear errors, no K8s complexity to hallucinate. You give your agent the install URL and it sets up the whole server.
Comment · 9 months ago
Building Frost, a simple self-hosted deployment platform. Docker-only, single-user, no Kubernetes. You point it at a repo or image, it handles the build → health check → deploy → stop old container flow.
Stack: Bun, Next.js, SQLite, Kysely. Been building it almost entirely with Claude Code which has been a surprisingly effective workflow for this kind of infra tooling.
Comment · 9 months ago
Been using Claude Code to build a small deployment tool (Frost) for exactly this use case. The meta experience is interesting - using an AI agent to build tooling that makes self-hosting easier.
What I've found: Claude Code is great at the "figure out this docker/nginx/systemd incantation" part but the orchestration layer (health checks, rollbacks, zero-downtime deploys) still benefits from purpose-built tooling. The AI handles the tedious config generation while you focus on the actual workflow.
github.com/elitan/frost if curious
Comment · 9 months ago
Amazon (AWS) is not cheap! :D
Comment · 10 months ago
interesting, you have a link?
Comment · 10 months ago
Plagiarized from what? Happy to address if you can point to what you're referring to.
Comment · 10 months ago
For those who can't wait for PG18 or need full instance isolation: I built Velo, which does instant branching using ZFS snapshots instead of reflinks.
Works with any PG version today. Each branch is a fully isolated PostgreSQL container with its own port. ~2-5 seconds for a 100GB database.
https://github.com/elitan/velo
Main difference from PG18's approach: you get complete server isolation (useful for testing migrations, different PG configs, etc.) rather than databases sharing one instance.
Comment · 11 months ago
helpful
Comment · 11 months ago
This looks really good, love the local LLM support. Will try this instead of Notion which is my current note taking app. Thank you!
Comment · 1 year ago
It's a killer feature indeed. Glad you liked it! :)
Comment · 1 year ago
Hey HN! I built Velo to solve a problem I kept running into: testing database migrations and debugging production issues without copying around massive database dumps or waiting for slow clones.
The core idea: use ZFS copy-on-write snapshots to branch PostgreSQL databases the way you branch Git repos. A 100GB database branches in ~2 seconds and takes ~100KB of space initially. Each branch is a complete, isolated PostgreSQL instance running in Docker.
How it works:
- Runs CHECKPOINT to flush PostgreSQL buffers (ensures consistency)
- Creates a ZFS snapshot (filesystem-level, instant)
- Clones the snapshot to a new dataset (CoW means no data copying)
- Spins up a new PostgreSQL container pointing at the clone
The mental model is: Project = Git repo, Branch = Git branch. Commands like `velo branch create api/test-migration` or `velo branch reset api/dev`.
I also added point-in-time recovery using WAL archiving, so you can create branches from specific timestamps (e.g., "5 minutes before the incident").
Requirements: Linux + ZFS + Docker.
Built using Bun and TypeScript.
Let me know what you think :)
Comment · 1 year ago
Sure is! Thank you :)