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A deploy puts a container on a compute service and prints its URL. There are three ways in; all of them end at the same place.

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Deploy paths

From source. The default. Requires a Dockerfile in the directory; the build runs remotely, and the image is deployed pinned by digest:
The listen port is read from the Dockerfile’s last EXPOSE line (8080 if there is none); override with --port. Check whether a directory will build — locally, offline, before deploying:
From a prebuilt image. Skip the build entirely — exactly one of a directory or --image per deploy:
From GitHub. Connect a repository in the console and pushes deploy automatically, with per-pull-request environments.

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Compute groups

A branch can run several compute services — an API, a worker, a websocket server. Each is its own group with its own URL, port, and deploys. With one compute service, insta deploy . needs no addressing; with more than one, pick the target:
Deploy to a branch’s compute from anywhere with --branch <name>. WebSocket apps should deploy with --websocket — it provisions a larger guest and connection-based concurrency.

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What happens on redeploy

  • Secrets and credential bindings (insta secrets bind) are injected as environment variables at deploy time. To land a changed secret without rebuilding, insta compute restart re-runs the already-deployed image against a freshly resolved bundle — no new image, no new spec.
  • The service’s URL is stable across deploys.
  • Sleeping services wake on request; a redeploy replaces the image they wake into.
If a deploy fails, check insta build . --explain for build-side problems, insta build logs <id> for the remote build’s own compile output (the deploy operation ID by default; --follow watches it live), and insta compute logs --deploy for the machine lifecycle log.
On self-hosted InstaCloud OSS, source deploys build locally with Docker (there is no remote builder, so insta build logs is cloud-only) and insta compute logs --deploy is cloud-only. insta secrets bind answers 501: every compute container already receives each service’s credentials under their own names, so read those (insta secrets list names them) or set your own with insta secrets set. The command-by-command list is in COMPATIBILITY.md.