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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.compartment.dev/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Compartment lets you define as many services as you need inside a single compartment.yml. Each service gets its own build, container, and readiness check, while sharing a project name and routing layer. This guide uses a real example — a web frontend and a backoffice API — to show the full setup.

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Project structure

The example repository has two runnable services under services/: 
my-repo/
  compartment.yml
  compartment.routes.yml
  services/
    web/
    backoffice/

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Define services in compartment.yml

Create compartment.yml at the repository root: 
name: multi-service

services:
  web:
    path: ./services/web
    readiness:
      type: http
      path: /healthz
      timeoutMs: 30000

  backoffice:
    kind: api
    path: ./services/backoffice
    readiness:
      type: http
      path: /ready
      timeoutMs: 30000
Key points:
  • web — the default kind (web) means Compartment treats this service as the public-facing frontend and exposes it directly.
  • backoffice — kind: api marks this service as an internal API; it is not exposed directly but can receive forwarded traffic from web.
  • path — a path relative to the repository root where Compartment builds and runs that service.
  • readiness — Compartment polls the given HTTP path before promoting the candidate container to active traffic. The deploy waits up to timeoutMs milliseconds for a successful response.

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Configure cross-service routing

Create compartment.routes.yml next to compartment.yml to forward requests from web to backoffice: 
version: 1

routes:
  - on: web
    path: /api/*
    to: backoffice
    stripPrefix: /api
This rule tells Compartment: when a request arrives at the web service on any path matching /api/*, proxy it to backoffice and strip the /api prefix before forwarding. The backoffice service sees the request at the original path without the prefix.
compartment.routes.yml manages browser-facing proxy rules. Secrets, environment-specific values, and domain configuration live outside this file — see Configuration reference for the full schema.

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Deploy all services

From the repository root, run: 
compartment deploy
Compartment reads both compartment.yml and compartment.routes.yml, builds every service in parallel, and applies the routing rules once all services pass their readiness checks.

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Deploy a single service

When you change only one service and want to redeploy just that part, use --service: 
compartment deploy --service backoffice
Compartment builds and promotes only the named service. The other services keep running their current deployments. Routing rules that reference the redeployed service are updated automatically once the new container is active.
Deploying a single service is faster and reduces blast radius. Use it for hotfixes or when only one service’s code has changed.

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Check status for all services

compartment status --project multi-service
The output lists each service with its promotion stage, health, and route URL.

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Next steps