Jun 24, 20263 min read

Building Architect: My Own Platform-as-a-Service

How I built a self-serve PaaS to deploy applications directly from GitHub using Next.js, Docker, and AWS.

ProjectArchitectureEngineering

When I first started building web applications, deployment was always the hardest part. I loved writing code, but the moment I had to push my application to the internet, I found myself fighting with servers, configurations, and complex CI/CD pipelines. That frustration led me to a simple question: what if I just built my own deployment platform?

That was the spark for Architect, a self-serve Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) designed to make deployment as simple as a Git push.

The Vision

I wanted a system where a developer could simply connect their GitHub repository, select a branch, and hit deploy. Behind the scenes, the platform should handle everything: fetching the code, building it in an isolated environment, starting the container, assigning a custom subdomain, and streaming logs in real-time.

It sounded ambitious. I was diving into deep backend architecture, container orchestration, and background job processing.

The Architecture Behind Architect

To make this a reality, I chose a robust tech stack: Next.js for the frontend and API layers, PostgreSQL for the database, AWS for cloud infrastructure, and Docker for containerization.

Here is how the core deployment flow works:

  1. GitHub Integration: When a user triggers a deployment, Architect fetches the latest code from their linked GitHub repository.
  2. Background Queues: The build request is added to a background job queue. Building applications synchronously would block the server, so decoupling this via asynchronous workers was essential.
  3. Dockerized Builds: The worker picks up the job and spins up an isolated Docker container. The application is built inside this clean environment, ensuring consistency.
  4. Live Logs and Subdomains: As the build progresses, real-time logs are streamed back to the dashboard. Once successful, the container is exposed, and a custom subdomain is assigned.

The Challenges

Building a PaaS is fundamentally different from building a standard CRUD application.

The biggest challenge was state management for long-running tasks. A deployment can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. I had to ensure the user interface reflected the exact state of the background worker — whether it was queued, building, starting, or failed.

Another major hurdle was Docker orchestration. I had to programmatically create, manage, and destroy containers, ensuring that failed builds didn't leave orphan containers eating up server resources.

The Result

Seeing the first successful automated deployment on Architect was an incredible feeling. That Deployed Successfully status badge meant all the complex moving parts — the GitHub API, the job queues, the Docker engine, and the frontend — were working in perfect harmony.

Architect isn't just a project; it is a solution to a problem I genuinely faced. It forced me to think beyond just writing application code and to start thinking about infrastructure, scaling, and platform engineering.

And just like my earlier projects, it proved to me that the best way to understand complex systems is to build them yourself.