Constructive Deployment

How to deploy the Constructive platform — local development with Docker Compose, database migrations with pgpm, and production container builds.

When to Apply

Use this skill when:

• Setting up the Constructive monorepo for local development
• Running Docker Compose services (Postgres, MinIO, API servers)
• Building the Constructive Docker image
• Deploying database migrations to local or remote Postgres
• Understanding the Makefile targets and service architecture

Local Development Setup

Prerequisites

• Docker and Docker Compose
• Node.js 22+ with pnpm
• pgpm CLI (available from the constructive monorepo)

Quick Start

# 1. Start Postgres and MinIO containers
make up
# OR: docker-compose up -d

# 2. Bootstrap database roles (ensure PG env vars are loaded — see pgpm-env skill)
pgpm admin-users bootstrap --yes

# 3. Deploy all database modules
pgpm deploy --createdb --workspace --all --yes

Stopping

# Stop and remove containers + volumes
make down
# OR: docker-compose down -v

Docker Compose Services

Core Services (docker-compose.yml)

Postgres credentials: postgres / password (local dev only)

Application Services (docker-compose.jobs.yml)

Running Application Services

The application services require a built Docker image:

# Build the constructive image
docker-compose -f docker-compose.jobs.yml build

# Start all application services
docker-compose -f docker-compose.jobs.yml up -d

Postgres Images

PostgreSQL 17+ is required for security_invoker views. Older images will fail with “unrecognized parameter security_invoker” errors.

Database Deployment

Deploy to Local Database

Prerequisite: Ensure PostgreSQL is running and PG env vars are loaded. See pgpm-docker and pgpm-env skills.

pgpm deploy --createdb --workspace --all --yes

Deploy to Remote Database

Point pgpm at a remote Postgres instance via environment variables:

export PGHOST=remote-host.example.com
export PGPORT=5432
export PGUSER=postgres
export PGPASSWORD=secure-password
export PGDATABASE=constructive

pgpm deploy --workspace --all --yes

Verify Deployment

pgpm verify

Revert (Rollback)

# Revert last change
pgpm revert --yes

# Revert to a tagged release
pgpm revert --to @v1.0.0 --yes

# Revert everything
pgpm revert --all --yes

Docker Image Build

The Constructive monorepo builds a multi-stage Docker image:

Build Stages

1. build stage — Node.js 22, installs pnpm, runs pnpm install --frozen-lockfile and pnpm run build
2. constructive stage — Runtime image with built artifacts, PostgreSQL client, and CLI shims

CLI Shims

The Docker image exposes three CLI commands:

Building Locally

docker build -t constructive:dev .

Makefile Targets

Environment Variables

Server Configuration

Database Connection

Admin vs Public API

The Constructive platform runs two API servers:

• Admin server (API_IS_PUBLIC=false, port 3002) — uses header-based routing (X-Api-Name, X-Database-Id, X-Meta-Schema). Used internally by the Constructive admin UI.
• Public server (API_IS_PUBLIC=true, port 3000) — uses domain-based routing. Serves external client applications.

Networking

All Docker Compose services share the constructive-net network, allowing inter-service communication by container name (e.g., postgres:5432 from within the constructive-server container).

Troubleshooting