Backend deployment (Docker Compose)

The recommended way to run the backend yourself is the bundled Docker Compose stack. You get the API on :3000 and (optionally) Postgres on :5432.

Prerequisites

Docker 24+ and Docker Compose v2
Around 200 MB of disk for the image and a few MB for the database

Quick start (SQLite)

git clone https://github.com/fire-tools-inc/app.git
cd app
docker compose build --no-cache
docker compose up -d backend
curl http://localhost:3000/api/v1/health

You should get back {"status":"ok"}. The SQLite file lives in the fire-tools-data named volume so it survives restarts.

With Postgres

Postgres is gated behind a Compose profile so you only pay the cost when you want it:

docker compose --profile postgres build --no-cache
docker compose --profile postgres up -d

Compose starts a postgres:16-alpine container and points the backend at it via DATABASE_URL. The schema in docs/database/schema.sql is Postgres-compatible and the same migrations work against both engines.

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Purpose
`PORT`	`3000`	HTTP port the API listens on
`DATABASE_URL`	`sqlite:./data/fire-tools.db`	Storage URL. Use `postgres://...` for Postgres.
`DATA_DIR`	`./data`	Directory for the SQLite file (ignored for Postgres)
`LOG_LEVEL`	`info`	`debug` / `info` / `warn` / `error`
`CORS_ORIGIN`	`*`	Comma-separated allowlist for CORS

Override in docker-compose.yml or by exporting them in your shell before docker compose up.

Persistence

The default docker-compose.yml declares two named volumes:

fire-tools-data — the SQLite database (or the Postgres pgdata)
fire-tools-logs — backend logs (rotated)

Back them up with docker run --rm -v fire-tools-data:/data -v $(pwd):/backup alpine tar czf /backup/fire-tools-data.tgz /data.

Reverse proxy / TLS

The backend listens on plain HTTP. Put it behind Caddy, Traefik or Nginx and terminate TLS there. The OpenAPI spec assumes the API is mounted at /api/v1/; if your proxy rewrites the path, update the servers block in docs/api/openapi.yaml to match before generating clients.

Health checks

GET /api/v1/health returns 200 {"status":"ok"} once the database is reachable and migrations are up to date. Wire it into your orchestrator's liveness probe.

Updating

git pull
docker compose build --no-cache
docker compose up -d

Migrations run on startup. See migrations & rollbacks for how to undo a bad release.