Core concepts
Cantila is a hosting cloud you talk to. Drop in files — a zip, a folder, a repo — or describe what you want. Cantila detects the stack, builds it, deploys it, and hands back a live URL. This page names the parts so the rest of the docs make sense.
The four parts
Cantila is three things you talk to, and one thing that runs your code.
| Part | What it is |
|---|---|
| Control plane | The API, the MCP server, and the brain. It detects stacks, runs builds, wires services, and decides what happens. Reachable at https://api.cantila.app/v1. |
| Console | The web dashboard at console.cantila.app. Chat Deploy, project cards, activity feeds, domains, billing. |
| CLI | The cantila binary. The same actions as the Console, from your terminal and your scripts. See the Cantila CLI. |
| Data plane | The managed VPS fleet that runs your workloads as containers, across regions fsn1, hel1, and ash. You never touch a node directly. |
You drive the control plane through the Console, the CLI, or — over MCP — through Claude. It does the rest on the data plane.
Projects
A project is the core object in Cantila. It's one app: its code, its env, its auto-wired services, its domains, and its history of releases. Everything else hangs off a project.
Deployments
A deployment is one build-and-release of a project — a single point in its history. Each new deployment supersedes the last one, so the project always points at exactly one live release.
Because old deployments stick around, rollback is instant: select a previous deployment and it becomes live again. You never rebuild to go back.
Auto-wired services
Every project is provisioned with its own managed services. Their connection strings and credentials are injected into the project's env as secrets before the first build runs, so your code can read them on day one.
- PostgreSQL — a managed database per project, available today. The
connection string lands as
DATABASE_URL. - Mailbox + sending domain — a project mailbox and a domain to send from (Phase 2).
- SMS number — a phone number for the project (Phase 3).
See auto-wired services for the full list and the env keys each one sets.
Environments and domains
Every project gets a free <slug>.cantila.app subdomain with SSL,
provisioned automatically. That's where your first deploy goes live.
You can attach custom domains too — DNS and SSL wire up for you. See Cantila Domains.
The phase model
Cantila ships in phases, and we're honest about the seams. Phase 1 is live today. Phases 2 and 3 are on the way. Here's what lands where.
| Phase | What lands |
|---|---|
| Phase 1 (live) | Deploy, custom domains, one managed Postgres per project, object storage, project templates, Stripe billing, the MCP server, the CLI, and Agents. |
| Phase 2 | Mail, a domains registrar, Automations + Connections, more databases per project, scaling and preview deployments, the full API, and monitoring. |
| Phase 3 | SMS / Voice / Numbers, white-label, microVM isolation, multi-region, and SSO. |
When a feature in these docs depends on a later phase, it says so.
Where to next
- Quickstart — sign up and ship your first project in five steps.
- Chat Deploy — turn intent or files into a running deployment.
- The Cantila CLI — drive Cantila from your terminal.
- The API — talk to the control plane directly.