scrabble-game/deploy

deploy

The full Scrabble contour: backend + gateway + the static landing + Postgres + the Telegram connector (with a VPN sidecar) + the observability stack (OTel Collector → Prometheus + Tempo → Grafana), fronted by a caddy that owns a single /_gm Basic-Auth (the admin console + Grafana). Topology and the decision record are in ../docs/ARCHITECTURE.md §13; this file is the operational reference for every environment variable.

Services

Service	Image	Role
caddy	caddy:2-alpine	Edge proxy (alias scrabble on edge): single /_gm Basic-Auth → admin console + Grafana; /app/, /telegram/ + the Connect path → gateway; the catch-all (incl. /) → landing. TLS per CADDY_SITE_ADDRESS.
gateway	built (gateway/Dockerfile, target gateway)	Public edge; serves the embedded game SPA at /app/ + /telegram/; Connect-RPC edge. / redirects to /app/.
landing	built (gateway/Dockerfile, target landing)	Static landing page at / (caddy:2-alpine + the shared Vite build, deploy/landing/Caddyfile); absorbs stray public paths.
backend	built (backend/Dockerfile)	Domain service; bakes in the DAWG dictionaries; runs migrations at boot.
postgres	postgres:17-alpine	Database (named volume, pg_isready healthcheck).
vpn + telegram	sidecar + built (platform/telegram/Dockerfile)	Telegram connector; egresses through the AmneziaWG sidecar; internal gRPC at telegram:9091.
otelcol	otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib	OTLP/gRPC :4317 → Prometheus scrape (:9464) + Tempo.
prometheus	prom/prometheus	Metrics, 15d retention.
tempo	grafana/tempo	Traces, 72h retention.
grafana	grafana/grafana	Dashboards (provisioned), anonymous-admin behind caddy's /_gm/grafana.

Networking: inter-service traffic is on the private internal network (project-scoped DNS); only caddy joins the shared external edge network so the host caddy can reach it at scrabble:80. edge must already exist on the host (docker network create edge).

Run it

Locally — copy the template, fill the required values, bring it up:

cp deploy/.env.example deploy/.env     # then edit deploy/.env
docker network create edge             # once, if it does not exist
cd deploy && docker compose up -d --build

In CI (the test contour) — .gitea/workflows/ci.yaml's deploy job maps the Gitea TEST_-prefixed secrets/variables onto the unprefixed names below and runs docker compose up -d --build on the runner host. The prod deploy maps the PROD_ set the same way. So a Gitea secret named TEST_POSTGRES_PASSWORD feeds the compose's POSTGRES_PASSWORD, etc.

The deploy job also seeds the config files (caddy, otelcol, prometheus, tempo, grafana) to a stable host path ($HOME/.scrabble-deploy) and sets SCRABBLE_CONFIG_DIR to it before up. The runner's checkout is an ephemeral act workspace that is removed after the job — binding config straight from it would dangle the mounts in the long-lived containers (Grafana would log no such file or directory). Locally SCRABBLE_CONFIG_DIR defaults to ., so the compose binds from this directory.

Required variables

docker compose aborts immediately if any of these is unset (they use :?):

Variable	Gitea kind	Purpose
POSTGRES_PASSWORD	secret	Postgres password (also embedded in BACKEND_POSTGRES_DSN).
AWG_CONF	secret	AmneziaWG config for the VPN sidecar (the connector's only egress). Must not contain a DNS= line — it hijacks the shared netns's resolv.conf and breaks the connector resolving otelcol (telemetry export). Without it, Docker's resolver handles both otelcol and api.telegram.org.
GM_BASICAUTH_HASH	secret	bcrypt hash gating /_gm (admin console + Grafana). Generate with docker run --rm caddy:2-alpine caddy hash-password --plaintext '<pw>'.
TELEGRAM_MINIAPP_URL	variable	The Mini App URL the connector hands out in deep links / buttons.

Plus the bot token — TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN (secret). It defaults to empty in compose, but the connector fails at boot when it is empty.

Optional variables (with defaults)

Variable	Gitea kind	Default	Purpose
POSTGRES_DB	variable	scrabble	Database name.
POSTGRES_USER	variable	scrabble	Database user.
DICT_VERSION	variable	v1.0.0	scrabble-dictionary release tag baked into the backend image (build-arg).
LOG_LEVEL	variable	info	Shared log level for backend / gateway / connector (debug|info|warn|error).
CADDY_SITE_ADDRESS	variable	:80	Caddy site address. Test: :80 (host caddy terminates TLS). Prod: a domain, so caddy does its own ACME.
GM_BASICAUTH_USER	variable	gm	Username for the /_gm Basic-Auth.
GRAFANA_ROOT_URL	variable	/_gm/grafana/	Grafana root URL (sub-path serving). Set the full https://<domain>/_gm/grafana/ behind a real domain.
GRAFANA_ADMIN_PASSWORD	secret	admin	Grafana admin password. Low impact (the login form is disabled, access is anonymous-admin behind caddy) but set it anyway.
TELEGRAM_GAME_CHANNEL_ID	variable	(empty)	The bot's game-channel id; empty/0 disables channel posts.
TELEGRAM_TEST_ENV	pinned	false	true routes the bot through Telegram's test environment (.../bot<token>/test/METHOD). The CI test contour pins this to true in ci.yaml (the contour is the test environment) — it is not a Gitea variable. Set it in .env for a local run; prod leaves it false.
TELEGRAM_API_BASE_URL	variable	(empty)	Override the Bot API host (a mock/self-hosted server); empty = https://api.telegram.org.
VITE_TELEGRAM_BOT_ID	variable	(empty)	UI build-arg: numeric bot id for the web Login Widget.
VITE_TELEGRAM_LINK	variable	(empty)	UI build-arg: friend-invite Mini App link (full URL, https://t.me/<bot>/<app> — <app> is the Mini App short name from BotFather).
VITE_TELEGRAM_GAME_CHANNEL_NAME	variable	(empty)	UI build-arg: the landing "Play in Telegram" link, the bot's game channel (e.g. https://t.me/Erudit_Game).
VITE_GATEWAY_URL	variable	(empty)	UI build-arg: gateway origin; empty = same-origin (the usual single-origin deploy).

The five VITE_* are build-args baked into the gateway and landing images at build time (both targets share one UI build stage — keep the args identical so it is built once), so changing them requires a rebuild (--build), not just a restart.

Fixed internal wiring (not operator-set)

These are hard-wired in docker-compose.yml (no ${...}), pointing the services at each other on the internal network — listed here so they are not mistaken for missing config: BACKEND_POSTGRES_DSN (→ postgres, search_path=backend), GATEWAY_BACKEND_HTTP_URL/_GRPC_ADDR (→ backend), GATEWAY_CONNECTOR_ADDR/BACKEND_CONNECTOR_ADDR (→ telegram:9091), and all three services' *_OTEL_*_EXPORTER=otlp → OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://otelcol:4317 (_INSECURE=true). The connector shares the VPN sidecar's netns: routing to the collector's internal IP is fine (connected route), but its AWG_CONF must not set a DNS= directive — that hijacks resolv.conf and breaks resolving otelcol ("produced zero addresses"); without it the netns uses Docker's resolver, which resolves both otelcol and api.telegram.org. GATEWAY_ADMIN_* is intentionally unset — caddy owns /_gm in the contour.

Host-side setup (outside this repo)

• edge network must exist on the host (docker network create edge).
• Host caddy route <domain> → scrabble:80 (the in-compose caddy serves HTTP in the test contour; the host caddy terminates TLS). Not needed on prod, where the contour caddy owns TLS (set CADDY_SITE_ADDRESS to the domain).
• Branch protection requires the single status check CI / gate. The unit / integration / ui jobs are path-conditional (they skip when their code did not change), and the always-running gate job aggregates them (passing when each succeeded or was skipped), so a skipped job never blocks a merge. See ../CLAUDE.md "Branching & CI".