Towlion Platform
Self-hosted GitHub-native micro-PaaS for deploying small web applications.
Deploy full web applications to your own server directly from GitHub. No custom dashboards, no complex control planes — just GitHub repositories, Actions, and a single server.
What is Towlion?
Most platforms require a central control plane:
Towlion takes a different approach. GitHub becomes the control plane.
Each repository contains everything required to deploy itself. Push code, and your application is live.
See Scope and Design Boundaries for what the platform does and does not do.
Key Features
- GitHub-native deployment — no custom CLI or dashboard needed
- Self-hosted infrastructure — runs on your own Debian server
- Multiple applications on one server — shared PostgreSQL, Redis, MinIO
- Automatic TLS certificates — via Caddy and Let's Encrypt
- Background workers — Celery + Redis for async tasks
- Object storage — S3-compatible via MinIO
- Preview environments — temporary deployments for pull requests
- Fork-based self-hosting — anyone can fork and deploy
Platform Stack
| Layer | Technology | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Debian | Host operating system |
| Containers | Docker + Compose | Runtime and orchestration |
| Reverse proxy | Caddy | TLS + routing |
| Backend | FastAPI (Python) | Application API |
| Frontend | Next.js (React, TypeScript) | Web interface |
| Database | PostgreSQL | Persistent data |
| Cache / Queue | Redis | Caching + job queues |
| Object storage | MinIO | S3-compatible storage |
| Background jobs | Celery | Async processing |
| CI/CD | GitHub Actions | Automated deployments |
Why Towlion?
Most cloud platforms are designed for large-scale applications. Towlion focuses on a different use case: small, deployable applications.
The goal is to make it easy to:
- Build small web tools
- Deploy them quickly
- Self-host them on your own server
- Share them with others through GitHub
License
MIT License