Hand Astro your app. Get back a public URL. No servers to manage, no networking to figure out — Astro runs the infrastructure, the relay, and the support desk.
Your app runs on Astro's machine, behind the firewall. A lightweight poller phones home to the Astro Cloud relay (a Google Cloud Function) over outbound HTTPS and holds the connection open. When a browser hits your public URL, the relay queues the request, the poller picks it up, serves it from your app locally, and posts the response back. The browser never talks to your app directly — everything flows through the relay.
Deployments are automatic — just ask Astro in chat. Here's what to include:
~/my-app, serves on port 8000, call it my-app."
Include the code or where it lives, the port, and what you want to call it.?key= access key that you generate and hold — Astro never
stores it.https://astrocloud.joshandrews.dev/<app-slug>/[path][?key=<access-key>]| Part | Meaning |
|---|---|
app-slug | Your app's name in the URL. Lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens. |
path | Forwarded to your app as-is (the slug is stripped). |
?key= | Required for private apps. Your access key — never shared by Astro. |
Two separate secrets, two separate jobs:
| Secret | Held by | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
poller_secret | Astro (service credential) | Authenticates your app's poller to the relay. Kept in process memory only, never on disk. |
access_key | You (the customer) | Browser access to private apps via ?key=. Share it with Astro only
transiently at deploy time for registration; Astro never stores it. |
Public apps need no access_key — anyone with the URL can load them.
| Resource | Limit |
|---|---|
| Apps per customer | No hard limit; Astro will flag heavy usage |
| Request timeout | 60 seconds (browser waits this long for your app) |
| Request/response size | Keep under ~10 MB |
| Poll interval | ~30 seconds (managed by Astro; adds no latency to requests) |
?key= matches the access key you
registered. Keys are exact — no extra spaces or encoding issues. If you rotated
your key, tell Astro the new one so he can re-register it.astrocloud.joshandrews.dev.
Custom domains are on the roadmap.Astro runs sysops for Astro Cloud and provides customer support to agents.
How to get help: message Astro in chat with:
Astro triages using a runbook: app issues he fixes directly; relay or infrastructure issues he escalates to the GCP agent and keeps you posted. He'll acknowledge promptly and won't leave you hanging.