Blog
Notes from the deep
tako typegen and the Ambient Tako Global Tako installs a frozen Tako global before your code runs and tako typegen types every secret, channel, workflow, and env var — zero imports, zero silent typos.
Secure Code Execution for AI Agents AI agents that run code need two security layers: a V8 sandbox for untrusted execution, and secure secret injection so credentials stay out of the isolate.
Tako vs Inngest and Trigger.dev Inngest and Trigger.dev gave JavaScript a durable-step model worth copying. Tako ships the same primitives embedded in the server that already runs your app — no separate queue service, no per-run bill.
Durable Workflows Are Here Tako now ships a durable workflow engine — step checkpoints, retries, cron, sleep for days, and signal/waitFor — on your own VPS, no external queue service.
Stateful Apps on Tako: SQLite, Uploads, and the TAKO_DATA_DIR Contract TAKO_DATA_DIR is a persistent, per-app directory that survives deploys and rolling restarts — so SQLite, file uploads, and queue data just work on a single VPS without external storage.
Tako vs Render, Railway, and Vercel: Bringing the Managed-PaaS Feel to Your Own Boxes Render, Railway, and Vercel made deploying feel easy. Tako brings that same experience to the VPS you already own — same CLI flow, same scale-to-zero, without the platform bill.
The Dev Daemon: Why tako dev Is Just a Client tako dev isn't a watcher script — it's a thin viewer attached to a persistent daemon that owns app processes, logs, routing, and TLS.
LAN Mode: Hand Your App to a Phone in Three Seconds Press l in tako dev and your app is reachable from any phone or tablet on your Wi-Fi as myapp.local — real HTTPS, no ngrok, no port forwarding.
Durable Channels, Built In Tako now ships durable WebSocket and SSE channels with replay, reconnection, and per-channel auth — no Pusher, no Redis, no sidecars.
What Happens When You Run tako deploy The full sequence from command to live traffic — build, upload, swap, drain — in about 10 seconds.
The Go SDK Is Here Tako's Go SDK wraps any http.Handler — Gin, Echo, Chi, or plain net/http — with health checks, secrets, and graceful shutdown in one line.
Tako vs Sidekick Sidekick turns a VPS into a Docker-powered mini-PaaS. Tako skips Docker entirely. Here's how the two CLI deploy tools compare.
Tako vs Fly.io: The Self-Hosted Edge Fly.io gives you a beautiful CLI and 30+ regions on their hardware. Tako gives you the same feel on your own boxes. An honest comparison of two takes on the edge.
Build a Distributed Web App with Tako and CockroachDB Three VPS boxes, Tako for the app layer, CockroachDB for the data layer — a fully distributed stack running on hardware you own, with no managed plan underneath.
Multi-Stage Builds for Monorepos How Tako's build stages let you deploy monorepo apps with shared packages — no Docker, no CI pipeline, just TOML.
Build Your Own Edge Network on Commodity Hardware Three $5 VPS boxes in different regions, one tako.toml, and Cloudflare geo-steering. Your own global edge network on hardware you own.
Zero-Downtime Deploys Without a Container in Sight How Tako rolls out new versions with connection draining, health-checked readiness, and automatic rollback — all with native processes.
Your $5 VPS Is More Powerful Than You Think A $5 Hetzner box gives you 2 vCPUs, 4 GB RAM, and 20 TB bandwidth. Here's what cloud platforms charge for the same resources — and how Tako bridges the gap.
The Fetch Handler Pattern: One Function, Every Runtime Why Tako chose the web-standard fetch handler as its universal app interface — and how the same export runs on Bun, Node, and Deno.
Secrets Without .env Files How Tako encrypts secrets at rest, injects them via fd 3 at runtime, and generates typed accessors — so plaintext never touches disk.
Tako vs Coolify: Dashboard vs CLI Coolify gives you a full web UI and manages everything in Docker. Tako gives you a CLI, native processes, and a Pingora proxy. Different tools for different people.
One Config, Many Servers One tako.toml, two environments, three servers across regions — how Tako takes a side project all the way to a real production setup.
Scale-to-Zero Without Containers How Tako scales apps to zero and cold-starts them on demand — without Docker, containers, or a cloud platform.
Tako vs Kamal How Tako and Kamal approach self-hosted deployment differently — Docker vs native processes, registries vs SFTP, and what each gets right.
Tako vs Dokku: Two Philosophies for Self-Hosted Deployment Dokku wraps everything in Docker. Tako runs your app directly. Here's how the two approaches compare — and when each one makes sense.
Local Dev with Real HTTPS, Real DNS, and Zero Config Stop fighting localhost:3000 and self-signed cert warnings. Tako dev gives you real HTTPS, real domains, and a local proxy — automatically.
Pingora vs Caddy vs Traefik: Why We Built on Cloudflare's Proxy How we chose Pingora over Caddy and Traefik for Tako's proxy layer — and what it means for performance, memory, and architecture.
Why Tako Ships an SDK Most deploy tools stop at infrastructure. Tako's SDK gives your app readiness signaling, secret injection, and runtime abstraction — here's why.
Why We Don't Default to Docker (and When You Should Still Use It) Why we skip the Docker rebuild loop — and when containers still make sense.
Hello, world Tako is live — a complete platform for running apps on your own servers. Deployment, routing, TLS, secrets, and local dev in a single tool.