Deploy

A project ships as one bundle folder; the host runs protobase around it.

pnpm --filter erp protobase build    # the bundle to ship: examples/erp/dist/
pnpm build:serve                     # the runtime the host carries: dist/protobase-serve.js
bun --no-install /opt/protobase/protobase-serve.js /app/protobase.config.js   # on the host: the API

The bundle holds three things, four when the config uses native add-ons:

dist/
  protobase.config.js     the config module, run by the serve runtime
  node_modules/           only with native add-ons: those packages, with linux x64 and arm64 binaries
  public/                 the admin UI: index.html and content-hashed assets/
  protobase.bundle.json   the manifest: which paths go to the server

The host serves public/ itself and sends only the manifest’s api paths to the runtime, so loading the UI never needs a running container. The runtime serves the API alone; protobase serve dist serves the whole folder the same way, to check a bundle locally. The host passes DATABASE_URL, PORT (default 8787) and optionally REQUEST_LOG, plus the project’s own settings (BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, …). The runtime and the config module are plain JavaScript for Bun: no install, no TypeScript, no writes. The runtime supplies protobase and the dependencies it runs on the server (pg, postgres, kysely, better-auth, …), so the config module carries only the project’s code and the other packages it uses. The manifest format and the routing rules are in the CLI reference: build, build-serve and serve.