cast/docs/semantics.md
claude-hdb 6b363cb5be fix: apply creates the environment its resources name (#38)
POST /projects hands a new project Coolify's OWN default environment,
`production` — never ours. cast then created every resource with
`environment_name: <our --env>`, so the first apply against a project that
did not exist yet 404'd on its first resource ("Environment not found") and
left the project behind, created and empty.

Two comments in the source already asserted the behaviour as though it were
implemented (cli.ts:716, :808), and the README says it outright — the route
existed in the vendored 4.1.2 spec, cast just never called it. It went unseen
because every environment cast had touched until now was hand-built in a UI
and adopted, so it already existed under whatever name someone typed. The
genuinely-from-nothing apply is the one path nobody had run.

apply now reconciles project + environment once per run, before the first
create. Read-before-write: an environment that already exists is never written
to, so adoption is untouched and this cannot regress an apply that works today.
A 409 is read as "present" (the race between our read and our write).

Coolify's default environment is LEFT ALONE, per apply-never-deletes — deleting
it would be the first delete cast ever performs. An empty `production` beside
the environment everything lives in is reported, the same courtesy an orphan
gets, and removed by hand or not at all.

The regression test drives the real failure, not a call count: the fake Coolify
404s a create whose environment_name it does not carry, exactly as a live box
does — against the old executor it reproduces the reported error verbatim.
2026-07-14 16:43:12 +00:00

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Behavior

The guarantees cast apply makes, the shapes it accepts, and the places Coolify 4.1.2 does not cooperate. Extracted from the substrate repo this tool was born in; the Coolify-source citations were verified against coollabsio/coolify v4.1.2 and the vendored OpenAPI in reference/.

The command surface itself is in the README; this file is the behavior behind it.

Team scoping

A Coolify API token is scoped to exactly one team, and nothing below the team scopes it. User::createToken overrides Sanctum's and stamps the session's team onto the token ('team_id' => session('currentTeam')->id); the API then resolves every request through it — getResourceByUuid($uuid, getTeamIdFromToken()), which walks resource → environment → project → team_id.

The consequence that matters: a wrong-team token does not error. getResourceByUuid returns null on a team mismatch, and null is indistinguishable from "this resource does not exist yet" — which, to apply, is an invitation to create it. An apply run with a token minted under the wrong team would not fail loudly; it would provision a duplicate set of resources into the wrong team, against whatever server that team owns. That is why the team assert is a correctness guarantee and not a hardening nicety, and why it is fail-closed:

  • Every environment in environments.yaml must declare team: (id, name, or both). A missing team is a schema error — an environment whose token cannot be verified is exactly the failure the binding exists to prevent.
  • Every command that reaches a live Coolify (apply, diff, server add, smoke) resolves GET /teams/current — the only endpoint that answers "what team does this token act as?", resolved from the token itself (TeamController@current_teamgetTeamIdFromToken()) — and compares it to the binding before its first read, aborting on mismatch. Before the first read, not merely the first write: a wrong-team diff reports "everything is absent", which is the very lie an apply would then act on.
  • An unreadable or unauthorized answer aborts too. It is not "no team"; it is an unknown answer to the one question cast must not guess at.

An Environment is not an auth boundary. It has no team_id of its own (it belongs to a project) and no API path scopes by it — Coolify environments are an organizational construct. The team is the only boundary there is.

A server belongs to exactly one team. There is no pivot table and — unlike GithubApp — no is_system_wide escape hatch; upstream confirms teams cannot share a server and defers it to v5 (coollabsio/coolify#1820, #3235). Registering a server under the wrong team is not fixable with a PATCH, which is why server add takes --env and inherits the same assert.

GitHub Apps, unlike servers, can be shared across teamsis_system_wide is the supported mechanism, on both the read and write side:

// GithubController@list_github_apps (backs GET /github-apps)
$githubApps = GithubApp::where(function ($query) use ($teamId) {
    $query->where('team_id', $teamId)
        ->orWhere('is_system_wide', true);
    // …

POST /github-apps validates and accepts is_system_wide (boolean), stamping team_id from the token. So one App flagged system-wide is visible and usable from every team, and per-team App duplication is unnecessary. Note the corollary for cast: because GET /github-apps deliberately includes other teams' system-wide Apps, resolving a GitHub App by name is not a proxy for being in the right team — which is the second reason the team assert has to be explicit.

dockercompose build pack (compose apps, box-B parity): a manifest application whose build.pack is dockercompose declares build.compose_file (path to the compose file in the checkout) and service_domains (map of compose service name → string[] of URLs) instead of the plain-app port/healthcheck/domains trio — those three live in the compose file itself and are rejected by the manifest schema on a compose app; conversely service_domains/compose_file are rejected on a non-compose app. domains is schema-optional at the top level for this reason, but still required (via a superRefine) for every non-compose app — no existing manifest needs to change.

core:
  source: { repo: acme/widget, branch: main }
  build: { pack: dockercompose, base_directory: /, compose_file: docker-compose.yaml }
  service_domains:
    api: ["https://api.widget.example.com"]
  env_template: core.prod.env.template

Internally cast keeps the map vocabulary (docker_compose_domains: {service: string[]}) all the way through resolve.ts/apply.ts/diffing; only cli.ts's wire-translation layer (applicationApiFields) flattens it to the Coolify request shape — an array of {name, domain} where domain is that service's URLs comma-joined (verified against the /applications/private-github-app and PATCH /applications/{uuid} request schemas in reference/coolify-openapi-4.1.2.json). A compose app's create payload also sets connect_to_docker_network: true — without it the stack cannot reach the environment's managed Postgres/Redis resources at all, which fails at runtime rather than at apply time.

Live-state projection (projectLiveFields) reads both fields back for a compose app: docker_compose_location (a plain string on the GET model) and docker_compose_domains, which the GET model documents as a nullable string, not the structured array the write side accepts — parsed defensively as JSON back into the internal map, degrading to "field omitted" (not a crash) on anything that doesn't parse as a well-formed array of {name, domain}. Projecting both is what keeps a matching re-apply a true no-op instead of a spurious PATCH + stack redeploy every run. This parsing path is unverified against a real Coolify instance — the read-back is only confirmed by an overlay apply followed by an overlay-edit re-apply against a live instance, which has not yet happened. If a live instance turns out not to expose docker_compose_domains on read, apply's idempotency guarantee for the domains half breaks and needs the same warn-and-drop treatment as service domains below — that also removes the cutover mechanism (domains no longer flip via re-apply), so it would need a runbook amendment, not a silent fix.

Hostname overlay, compose apps: --hostname-overlay <file> accepts a per-service map value for a compose app's entry instead of the plain-app string[]:

core:
  api: ["http://api.<PROD-IP>.sslip.io"]
landing: ["http://landing.<PROD-IP>.sslip.io"]

Only the named services' domain lists are replaced; other services in the same app keep their manifest values. A map value naming an unknown service errors, listing the app's known services; a map value against a non-compose app errors (hostname overlay gave a service map for non-compose app <name>) — the plain string[] shape keeps working unchanged for non-compose apps.

Structural vs. full diff are tied to what the configured token can do, not a flag alone: structural diff needs only a standing read-only token and never compares env values (output says so explicitly); full diff (and apply, which always requires full) needs a session token with read:sensitive and compares secret values too — but the output only ever says secret FOO differs, never the value on either side.

Apply semantics (verbatim from the spec's Global Constraints — never softened by an implementation detail):

  • Apply never deletes. Resource removal or rename is a manual runbook act; diff reports the orphan as such until that act happens.
  • Apply never recreates a database resource under any circumstances.
  • Apply creates the project and its environment when they are absent — the two things a resource create has to name before it can name anything else. Coolify hands a project it has just created its OWN default environment (production), never ours, so without this the first apply against a from-nothing project 404s on its first resource — "Environment not found" — and leaves the project behind, created and empty (#38). Read-before-write, so an environment that already exists is never written to: adoption keeps working exactly as it did, and this cannot regress an apply that works today.
  • That default environment is left alone, per apply never deletes. An empty production beside the environment everything lives in is reported (the same courtesy an orphan gets) and removed by hand, or not at all.
  • On drift in a field the API cannot update in place (build_pack, a database's type/version, a service's type), apply fails loudly naming the field rather than recreating.
  • Apply ends every mutated resource with a restart/redeploy (instant_deploy on create, /deploy or /restart on update) — API mutations land in Coolify's DB, not in running containers, so a create or update that skipped this would silently not take effect.
  • Direction is one-way, manifest → Coolify, always.
  • Environment guards: apply refuses if a var matching that environment's forbidden_var_patterns is present in the resolved env at all, regardless of value — "off" means absent, not false (see the README). apply also refuses --path combined with --env prod: prod always reads the default branch, so a feature-branch checkout can never reach it.

The registry (projects:)

The top-level projects: block is the list of which projects exist, and in which environments. It is the only place that says so: environments: says where things deploy to, environments.<env>.projects.<repo> says how an already-named project is placed, github_apps says how to clone one you have already named.

projects:
  heavy-duty/incubator:
    environments: [prod, staging]
  • Keyed by the full <org>/<repo> slug, with no bare-<repo> fallback. The key is the repo; there is no repo: field. github_apps and environments.<env>.projects accept a bare key because state files in the wild are written that way; this block is new and has none, so it requires the slug — a bare <repo> is unique only within an org.
  • environments: names OUR environments — the keys of the environments: block, the values --env takes — never Coolify's. Non-empty.
  • Optional. A state file with no projects: block loads unchanged, and projectsIn reports [] for every environment.

Validated at parse time, so every verb refuses a registry that lies. Two refusals, both defending the same failure — a silently skipped project reads exactly like a clean one, which makes silence, the most common report there is, ambiguous:

  1. An environment that does not exist (a typo in projects.<slug>.environments) is an error naming the unknown environment and listing the known ones. Left alone, the project would be registered into an environment no command can visit: a fleet run skips it, reports nothing, exits clean.
  2. A binding the registry does not register. Every environments.<env>.projects.<slug> key must be a project the registry registers for that environment. Otherwise the two blocks describe two different fleets: a destination_uuid or smoke_target real enough for a direct cast apply <repo> --env <env> to act on, and invisible to every fleet run over that environment. Enforced only when projects: is present, so pre-registry state files keep loading.

The registry is what makes two things possible, neither of which can be attempted without a list to iterate: fleet operations (--all, below), and rebuild-from-state — restoring a Coolify from the state repo, which is otherwise an assumption, since you cannot restore what you cannot enumerate.

Fleet runs (--all)

cast diff --env <env> --all and cast apply --env <env> --all act on every project the registry lists for that environment, in place of the <org>/<repo> positional. The projects are visited in the registry's sorted order (projectsIn) — a fleet report a human reads top to bottom, and CI diffs, must not reshuffle because someone appended a project.

One implementation. --all loops the same per-project path the single-repo form runs (checkout → secrets → desired → bindings → team-asserted client → live read → diff → optionally apply). There is deliberately no second, parallel fleet code path: two implementations of "what a project run is" would drift, and drift is the thing this tool exists to catch.

The instance and the team are asserted once, before the first project's first read. One --env means one instance and one team for the whole run, so the gate lands where it always did — strictly before the first live read, which is already the lie a wrong-team token tells (see Team scoping).

Fails closed on the aggregate

A registered project cast cannot reach is an ERROR, never a skip. "Cannot reach" is every way a project can fail to answer: the clone failing, the manifest carrying no block for this environment, the secret store being absent or undecryptable, the Coolify project or environment being absent (LiveLookup.found === false), and any HTTP error. They collapse into one outcome because only one thing about them matters downstream — this project was not read — and a silently skipped project reads exactly like a clean one. That is the failure of #12/#18/#22 at fleet scale, and it would make silence, the most common report there is, the least trustworthy one.

So the aggregate reports coverage (registered / read / clean / drifted / unreachable), and the exit code ranks an unread project above a drifted one:

verb exit meaning
diff --all 0 every registered project was read, and every one is clean
diff --all 1 every one was read, and at least one has drift
diff --all 2 a project could not be read. Outranks drift: an unreadable project is not a diff result, it is the absence of one
apply --all 0 every registered project applied
apply --all ≠0 anything else

fleetExitCode defaults to 2 on any coverage shape it does not recognize — an exit code is the only part of the report CI reads, so an unrecognized shape must fail rather than pass.

Opposite dispositions on failure, both deliberate

  • diff --all runs every project to completion. A read that stops early hides the drift in the projects it never reached; a read that continues costs nothing.
  • apply --all stops at the first failure, and reports which projects were applied and which were not touched. A write that continues costs everything: the next project's apply would be a guess about whether the last one broke something it depends on. apply is idempotent, so re-running after the fix is a no-op over the projects that already applied.

apply keeps its usual position on an absent Coolify project — it creates it, exactly as a single-project apply does (see the read side, and LiveLookup). Only diff treats absence as unreachable, because diff may only ever describe a target that already exists.

Two refusals

  • An empty or absent registry refuses (exit 2). projectsIn answers [] both for a state file with no projects: block and for one whose registry names nothing in this environment; to a fleet run they are the same thing — nothing to iterate — and "0 projects, clean" is precisely the sentence this feature exists to make impossible. The refusal names what was looked for, distinguishes an unmigrated state file from a registry pointed elsewhere, and prints the YAML to write.
  • --all is mutually exclusive with the repo positional and with every single-project coordinate: --path, --project, --environment, --resource, --hostname-overlay. Each names ONE project's checkout, ONE project's Coolify name, ONE box's resource names — none is true of the project beside it. Fleet-wide they are meaningless at best and dangerous at worst: --project X across a registry points every project at the same Coolify project, which on diff is a false report and on apply is every manifest in the fleet written into one project. The refusal names the offending flag and says what applying it fleet-wide would have done.

Placement (destinations)

A destination is the Docker network a resource is created on. It is declared per project — environments.<env>.projects.<repo>.destination_uuid — because a destination is scoped project × environment, and the environment block above it says server:, which is exactly what two projects share.

Enforced once, at create. apply sends destination_uuid on every create (applications, databases, services — Coolify runs identical destination logic in all three controllers). It is never sent on update, and apply never moves a live resource between networks.

Not comparable, and therefore reported rather than compared. Coolify 4.1.2 accepts a destination_uuid on write and returns a destination_id (an integer primary key) on read, exposes no endpoint mapping one to the other, and in fact has no destinations API at all (zero routes at v4.1.2). So the declared UUID cannot be verified against the live resource it was sent for — by cast or by anything else. Two consequences, both deliberate:

  • diff never diffs the destination as a field. Doing so would compare a UUID against an int and report drift that could never be resolved — a phantom "update" on every run.
  • diff instead groups live resources by the destination_id Coolify does report. That int is opaque, but it is comparable to itself, which catches the thing worth catching: a project whose resources do not all sit on one network is a project whose isolation is broken. That is split placement, and it is drift — non-clean, reported, and not repaired (same disposition as an orphan).
  • Whenever a destination is declared, diff says explicitly that it was not compared. Silence would make an unverified setting read as a verified one — the failure shape this document exists to avoid.

Coolify's create-time behavior (ApplicationsController ~L1003, DatabasesController ~L1700, ServicesController ~L378 @ v4.1.2): a server with one destination uses it and ignores any destination_uuid sent, never validating it — so a typo is invisible there. A server with more than one rejects a create that omits it (400), and rejects a UUID that belongs to another server (422). The second case is why cast could not apply to a shared box at all before this field existed. Citations: reference/README.md.

Instance selection

The Coolify a command talks to is an explicit, named value — not a property of whatever <state>/.coolify.env happens to contain at the moment. Resolution order, highest first:

  1. --instance <name><state>/.coolify/<name>.env
  2. the environment's instance: binding in environments.yaml
  3. <state>/.coolify.env (the default; unchanged when neither of the above is used)

Two refusals, both fail-closed:

  • An unknown --instance aborts, naming the instances that do exist. It does not fall back to the default — that fallback is how a --full diff meant for a legacy box gets run against production.
  • COOLIFY_READ_ONLY=true in an instance file makes it read-only, and apply / smoke / server add refuse it before their first call. The guard is the declaration, not the token's scope: an instance configured for inspection must not be writable even when the token it holds would permit the writes. diff, team and capture still work against it — they read.

Every command that reaches a live Coolify prints which one, next to the team assert.

Adoption (capture)

capture is the only verb that writes into the state directory rather than into Coolify, and the only one that reads a hand-built instance as a source rather than as a target. It exists because cast is otherwise scoped to the steady state and has no bootstrap path for a box that predates its manifest.

The required set comes from the manifest, not from the box. The names are the ${…} refs in that environment's env templates, read by the same parser apply uses to demand them (parseTemplate, shared by resolveTemplate and templateRefs — deliberately one grammar, because a drift between the two would mean capture collects a different set than apply will later require, which is the "a name silently missed" failure it exists to remove). So the store it writes contains exactly the names the manifest requires: a live var nobody asked for is not the store's business, and a template literal (NODE_ENV=production) is not a secret.

The mapping is not mechanical, and must not be. Some entries encode migration decisions rather than facts about the source box:

  • A DATABASE_URL / REDIS_URL read off the source points at the source box's Postgres/Redis. Copying it is confidently wrong in a way that looks entirely plausible, and the target's real URL does not exist until Coolify creates the resource. These are declared generated_secrets: in the manifest environment and written as the literal pending-coolify-generated.
  • staging's ADMIN_EMAIL must be the operator, not the source's value: staging and prod share a Mailgun domain, so a staging box carrying the real address can mail real users. That is --override.

A "capture everything" verb would therefore be silently wrong in a handful of entries out of seventeen — worse than being wrong in all of them. So every required name is forced into a disposition, and two of the four stop the run:

disposition source outcome
captured found live value taken
generated manifest generated_secrets (or --generated) pending-coolify-generated
overridden $CAST_CAPTURE_<NAME> operator's value
missing required by a template, absent live refuses
conflict one name, different live values on two resources refuses

generated_secrets is a manifest property, not a flag: the manifest is what knows DATABASE_URL comes from a database it declares. An entry naming something no template refs is a hard error — dead config here is not untidy but dangerous, because it reads like a guard standing over a name while standing over nothing, and the likeliest cause is a typo whose real name is then captured from the source box instead of placeheld.

Secret hygiene, all enforced by tests against real values:

  • The plan prints names and provenance, never values. (The one value-shaped thing it prints is the pending-coolify-generated literal, which carries no information about the source.)
  • An --override's value is read from $CAST_CAPTURE_<NAME>, never from argv — a command-line value is visible in ps to every process on the box.
  • Plaintext is piped to age on stdin: never a temp file, never stdout, never shell history. The hand-run recipe this replaces wrote /dev/shm/prod.env and relied on remembering to shred -u it.
  • An existing store is not overwritten without --force: it may hold the only copy of values the source box no longer has. Same disposition as apply's never-delete.

capture takes diff's position on an absent target (see LiveLookup), and refuses one: against a project or environment that isn't there it would read back zero live values and report every required secret as missing — an alarming, meaningless report about the wrong box. It also inherits the team assert (a wrong-team token reads back null for everything, producing the same lie) and the --path-with---env prod refusal (a feature-branch manifest must not decide which names land in the prod store).

The final gate is a typed confirmation — the environment's own name, after the plan. There is no --yes: a store written without someone reading the provenance column is the outcome the verb exists to prevent. A closed stdin aborts rather than hanging.

Drafts (inventory --emit-draft)

inventory with no repo sweeps an instance. --emit-draft <dir> writes that sweep down as a draft of cast's own inputs — a manifest per project, env templates, an environments.yaml carrying the projects: registry, an age store per project, and UNCAPTURED.md.

A draft is a PROPOSAL. It is never desired state, and apply never reads it.

sweep → emit draft → a human reads it → manifest PR → capture → apply

Same shape as terraform import → HCL. Every other rule in this section follows from that one, and each is enforced rather than merely stated:

refusal why
a non-empty target directory emitted over a repo that has a manifest, a draft would overwrite a reviewed spec with a live box's accumulated cruft — the one direction nobody reviews. Adoption is one-way.
an existing manifest at the path it would write the same invariant, once more at the file (assertNoExistingManifest). For a declared project the manifest is the truth; cast inventory <org>/<repo> reconciles it instead.
--emit-draft with a repo positional with a repo, inventory reconciles against a manifest that already exists — exactly the case where a draft must not be written.
no age recipient (and no --no-secrets) a draft whose store was silently skipped looks complete: a manifest, templates full of ${REF}s, and not one value anywhere. You would find out when apply refused, some time after the box those values were on stopped existing.
a project with two populated environments a draft carries one environment per project. Picking would emit a blueprint of half a box that says nothing about the other half. --environment breaks the tie — as a tiebreak, not a filter: a project with one populated environment is drafted from it either way, or filtering by name would drop whole projects (each client site sits alone in Coolify's default production) out of a blueprint that claims to describe the box.

Provider-generated names are placeheld, never copied. This is capture's discipline (see above), applied to a verb that has no manifest to tell it which names are generated — so it decides by name, in two families:

  1. Coolify's per-instance magic vars — SERVICE_FQDN_*, SERVICE_URL_*, SERVICE_PASSWORD_*, SERVICE_USER_*, SERVICE_BASE64_*.
  2. Any name carrying a datastore word (DATABASE, DB, POSTGRES, PG, REDIS, MONGO, …) and a connection word (URL, URI, DSN, HOST, PORT, PASSWORD, USER, …) as underscore-delimited segments — DATABASE_URL, UMAMI_DATABASE_URL, REDIS_URL_PROD, DB_HOST.

Each such name is written as the literal pending-coolify-generated, listed in the run's disposition table, and declared under the emitted manifest's generated_secrets: — so a later capture placeholds it again with no flag to remember. Its live value is not written into any artifact.

The rule errs wide, deliberately, because the two errors are not symmetric:

  • over-match a real secret → it is placeheld, reported, and you put the value back. Noisy, recoverable, loud.
  • under-match a generated one → it is copied, and a box rebuilt from the draft comes up working, reading and writing the source box's database, until the day that box is deleted. Silent, unrecoverable, quiet.

It is a name-pattern rule, not a promise: a var that points at the source box under a name cast does not recognize will be copied. The disposition table (names and provenance, never values — same contract as the capture plan) is what a reviewer reads to catch it.

Every other live var becomes a ${REF}, with its value in the age store — never a template literal. cast cannot know which of a box's vars are secret (nobody wrote it down, which is why the verb exists), and the two mistakes are again asymmetric: a non-secret in an encrypted store is untidy, a live API key written as a literal into a manifest is a key in a git repo. One name carrying different values on two resources is not a conflict cast resolves (one store holds one value per name — see capture's CONFLICT refusal): both are kept, under <RESOURCE>_<KEY> refs, and the split is reported.

UNCAPTURED.md is a first-class output, emitted on every run. cast cannot express everything a Coolify holds, and a blueprint that omits those things without saying so is worse than no blueprint — in a disaster you would trust it and rebuild a different box. Per resource, it names what was seen and could not be written: destination_id (which Docker network — no destinations API in 4.1.2 to resolve it to the UUID destination_uuid: wants, #21), service hostnames (no flat domains on a Coolify 4.1.2 service), Basic Auth / custom Traefik labels, build and deploy command overrides, backup schedules (not exposed on a database's GET — a rebuild has no backups until you declare them), database kinds cast does not model (MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, KeyDB, Dragonfly, ClickHouse — named, never silently dropped), env var names a cast template cannot express, and applications whose build pack the manifest has no vocabulary for (left out of the manifest rather than fabricated into the nearest pack).

It also carries the table below, because that is the file someone will be reading at the worst possible moment.

What a blueprint still cannot restore

control plane rig coolify install
structure draft → manifest PR → apply
secret values the age store + your key
data Coolify's DB backups → S3 (a separate path)
the GitHub App private key re-create by hand
S3 access keys re-mint by hand

The last two are not in the state repo — correctly, it holds no live credentials — and cannot be regenerated from it. A DR runbook that does not say so is not a runbook.

What the box cannot tell you, and cast therefore does not invent: the <org>/<repo> slug comes from an application's git remote (the only place a live box knows it), so a project with no application — a lone service — has no repo on the box at all. cast writes the bare project name as the registry key, and the registry's own parse-time refusal ("a registry key has no meaning without its org") then stops the file being used until a human supplies it. That refusal is the design: the alternatives are inventing an org, or leaving the project out of the registry — and a project missing from the registry is one every fleet run skips in silence. Likewise github_apps: nothing Coolify returns about an application says which App cloned it, so cast binds every repo to the instance's only GitHub App when there is exactly one (there is no other it could be), and writes a REVIEW-… marker when there is not.

Cloning a private manifest

resolveCheckout resolves git credentials inside cast, in a fixed order — gh borrowed as a per-invocation credential helper, then GITHUB_TOKEN/GH_TOKEN, then the ambient helper — rather than leaving it to whatever the workstation's git config happens to do.

It matters because gh auth login does not wire git's credential helper (that is gh auth setup-git, a separate act most people never run), so a perfectly logged-in operator still fell through to git's interactive username/password prompt — which GitHub no longer accepts — and got an error about the repository rather than about the missing credentials. There is no routing around it for prod: --path is refused there, so the clone is the only path and its auth is mandatory.

GIT_TERMINAL_PROMPT=0 is set on every path, so cast can never hang on or fall into that prompt. The token is never placed in the clone URL or in http.extraheader — both leak it into ps, and the latter persists it into the clone's .git/config; the helper reads it from the environment at run time, so what lands in argv is the literal text $CAST_GIT_TOKEN. Note that the empty credential.helper= reset clears URL-scoped helpers (credential.https://github.com.helper, which is what gh auth setup-git writes) as well as generic ones, so cast's chosen credential is genuinely the one used — verified against a live private clone.

Known limitations, not defects:

  • Backup schedules are create-time only. A manifest database's backup block (frequency, retention) is applied only when the database is first created; it is deliberately kept out of the diffed fields (live Coolify state doesn't expose it back, so diffing it would flag spurious drift every run — breaking idempotency). Changing a schedule on an existing database is a runbook act, done by hand in the Coolify UI.
  • A service's domains cannot be applied via the API in Coolify 4.1.2, and is deliberately kept out of the diffed fields for the same idempotency reason as backup schedules above. The /services create/update payload takes a structured per-container urls list, not the manifest's flat domains: string[], and the manifest has no per-container name to build that list correctly from — so cast drops it rather than send a malformed payload. Live Coolify service state doesn't expose a flat domains back either, so if it stayed in fields every domain-bearing service would diff as a perpetual update and every apply would needlessly restart it — desiredFromManifest drops domains from the service's fields and warns (service <name> declares domains (...), but apply cannot set them on Coolify 4.1.2 services — configure hostnames manually in the Coolify UI) once per run for every service that declared any. Set service hostnames in the Coolify UI by hand.
  • The redis default image is an unverified extrapolation. Coolify's "New Resource" wizard drives PostgreSQL version selection through a verified postgres:<version>-alpine image string; Redis has no version picker in that same wizard, so cast's redis:<version>-alpine guess for a manifest-declared version is the same Docker Hub tag convention applied by analogy, not confirmed against a live Coolify instance. Recommendation: leave a manifest database's version unset for redis until this has been verified once against bootstrap, letting Coolify pick its own default image instead of risking a bad tag.