Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025)

Working on Uncloud[1][2] — think Fly.io but self-hosted. A lightweight Docker clustering tool for running web apps on your own servers (from cloud VMs to bare metal) with no control plane to maintain. Perfect for teams who want cloud-like deployments without Kubernetes complexity. Early days but seeing promising results with eventually consistent state sync, zero-config mesh networking, and automatic HTTPS ingress.

[1]: https://github.com/psviderski/uncloud

[2]: https://uncloud.run

How is it different than using coolify with API?

https://coolify.io, An open-source & self-hostable Heroku / Netlify / Vercel alternative.

Why docker and not podman?

Honestly, I went with Docker simply because I'm much more familiar with it and its networking stack made integrating with WireGuard overlay straightforward. Podman support could come later but Docker's popularity and API stability made it the practical choice for the initial implementation.

As far as I know, Coolify is great for single-server PaaS or multi-servers that work independently. Uncloud focuses on distributed multi-server HA deployments (which is what is usually preferred for production). It allows you to spread workload replicas across different providers and locations while maintaining unified management. It's closer to Kubernetes and Docker Swarm in terms of providing building blocks to build your PaaS of choice. Unlike Coolify which requires a dedicated server to run the control plane Uncloud has no central component to manage. It's just a network of interconnected machines so there's no single point of failure and no central service that needs updates, backups, etc.

That is super useful, especially for small stuff in home labs. I was thinking to go ProxMox + Gardener + Kubevirt route, but never have time to work on it.

Oh this is going to be a beast. It depends on what you're trying to achieve though. If you're doing this primarily to learn the kube landscape then it's a great way to play around with these tools in a homelab.

Yes, exactly - wanted to learn by doing.