Fjall Docs — Deploy Production-Ready AWS Infrastructure in Minutes

Prerequisites

Complete these first:

Install the Fjall CLI
Connect an AWS account with fjall connect
Deploy your organisation (optional, for multi-account setups)

Overview

A Fjall application is an infrastructure stack with compute, storage, and networking resources. Pick a tier preset or build a custom stack.

fjall create app

This starts the interactive creator. To skip the prompts, pass options directly (see Non-interactive mode).

Application tiers

The first prompt, “Choose your starting point?”, lists six tiers in this order. Resilient and Enterprise require a Pro or Enterprise plan.

Tier	Compute	Database	Networking	Best for
Standard	Fargate	RDS Instance (t4g.large)	3 AZ, 1 NAT Gateway	General production workloads
Lightweight	Fargate Spot	RDS Instance (t4g.small)	2 AZ, 1 NAT Gateway	Low-traffic applications
Resilient	Fargate	Aurora with readers, KMS, proxy	3 AZ, 3 NAT Gateways	High-availability workloads
Enterprise	Fargate	Aurora with 2 readers, KMS, proxy	3 AZ, 3 NAT Gateways, VPC endpoints	Regulated, compliance-sensitive workloads
Tinkerer	ECS on EC2 (t4g.micro)	RDS Instance (t4g.micro)	2 AZ, no NAT Gateway	Learning and experimentation (free-tier)
Custom	Interactive selection	Interactive selection	Interactive selection	Specific requirements

Resilient keeps 30-day backup retention. Enterprise adds S3 flow logs (365 days) and 35-day backup retention.

Interactive flow

After you pick a tier, the creator prompts for the rest. A tiered application asks:

Name your application (for example, api).
Use suggested container? (only when a monorepo container directory is inferred, or skipped if you passed --container).
Include database?
Restore from an RDS snapshot? (only when a database is included). If yes, it asks for the snapshot identifier and master username.
Service setup, looping per service: count, name, type, Dockerfile path, port (unless read from the Dockerfile), and whether the service needs a database connection.
Review, then select the deployment account.

fjall create app

? Choose your starting point?
  ❯ Standard    Production-ready · 3 AZ, Fargate, RDS Instance
    Lightweight Streamlined · 2 AZ, Fargate Spot, RDS Instance
    Resilient   High-availability · 3 AZ, Aurora, KMS, Proxy
    Enterprise  Maximum capability · 3 AZ, Aurora, KMS, VPC endpoints
    Tinkerer    Free experimental · 2 AZ, ECS on EC2, RDS Instance
    Custom      Blank canvas · Build your way

? Name your application? api
? Include database? Yes
? Provide Dockerfile for "api"? No

Creating standard application: api

✔ Creating application structure
✔ Application structure created at ./fjall/api
✔ Installing dependencies
✔ Dependencies installed successfully

────────────────────────────────────────────────

Success! Your api application has been created.

Next Steps:
Deploy your application: fjall deploy api
Learn more: https://docs.fjall.io/deployment/deploy-application

What gets created

Your application structure:

fjall/
└── api/
    ├── infrastructure.ts   # CDK infrastructure code
    ├── package.json       # Dependencies and scripts
    ├── cdk.json          # CDK configuration
    ├── cdk.context.json  # CDK context values
    └── tsconfig.json     # TypeScript configuration

Infrastructure code

The generated infrastructure.ts for a standard application includes:

#!/usr/bin/env node

import {
  App,
  DatabaseFactory,
  ComputeFactory,
  getConfig,
} from "@fjall/components-infrastructure";

const appName = "api";
const app = App.getApp(appName);

app.addTags({
  "fjall:costAllocation:owner": "engineering",
});

const apiStorage = app.addDatabase(
  DatabaseFactory.build("ApiStorage", {
    type: "Instance",
    databaseName: "ApiDatabase",
  }),
);

app.addCompute(
  ComputeFactory.build("ApiCompute", {
    type: "ecs",
    ecrRepository: app.getDefaultContainerRegistry(),
    services: [
      {
        name: "api",
        capacityProvider: "FARGATE",
        containers: [
          {
            port: 3000,
            environment: {
              ENVIRONMENT: getConfig().environment,
              DATABASE_HOST: apiStorage.getHostEndpoint(),
              DATABASE_PORT: `${apiStorage.getHostPort()}`,
              DATABASE_NAME: apiStorage.getDatabaseName(),
            },
            secretsImport: {
              DATABASE_PASSWORD: apiStorage
                .getCredentials()
                .getImport("password"),
            },
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
    connections: [apiStorage],
  }),
);

Non-interactive mode

Pass options directly to skip the prompts. -n, --name is required. Every other option has an interactive prompt or a default.

fjall create app \
  -n api \
  -t standard \
  --database

Available options

Option	Description	Example
`-n, --name`	Application name (required, 2 to 50 characters)	`-n api`
`-t, --type`	Application tier (tinkerer, lightweight, standard, resilient, enterprise, custom)	`-t standard`
`--pattern`	Application pattern (`payload` or `staticsite`). See the note below on `nextjs`.	`--pattern payload`
`--tier`	Infrastructure tier for a pattern app (`--pattern-tier` is an alias)	`--tier standard`
`--pattern-domain`	Custom domain for the pattern	`--pattern-domain example.com`
`--database`	Include a database	`--database`
`--dockerfile`	Dockerfile path	`--dockerfile ./app/Dockerfile`
`--container-port`	Container port	`--container-port 8080`
`--services`	Service configuration as JSON	`--services '[{"name":"api"}]'`
`--owner`	Owner identifier	`--owner engineering`
`--network`	Network preset (none, tinkerer, lightweight, standard, resilient, enterprise)	`--network standard`
`--snapshot-identifier`	RDS snapshot ID for restoring from a snapshot	`--snapshot-identifier my-snapshot`
`--snapshot-username`	Snapshot master username	`--snapshot-username admin`

The nextjs pattern is not yet deployable. Recent CLI versions no longer offer it in the picker and refuse --pattern nextjs at create time; older versions accepted it and failed at deploy. Use payload for a Next.js-based app, or staticsite for a pre-built static site — its flags (--source, --build-command, --output-dir, --routing, --forms-to) are covered on the pattern page.

You can create an application on its own or as part of an organisation. For multi-account setups, deploy the organisation first.

Next Steps

Deploy Application

Deploy your application to AWS.

Add Resources

Extend with databases, storage, and more.

Connect AWS

Connect the AWS account your application deploys into.

Deploy Organisation

Set up multi-account management with Fjall.

Install & Setup

Application Deploy

Organisation Setup

Organisation Deploy

Create Application

Prerequisites

Overview

Application tiers

Interactive flow

What gets created

Infrastructure code

Non-interactive mode

Available options

Next Steps

Deploy Application

Add Resources

Connect AWS

Deploy Organisation

​Prerequisites

​Overview

​Application tiers

​Interactive flow

​What gets created

​Infrastructure code

​Non-interactive mode

​Available options

​Next Steps

Deploy Application

Add Resources

Connect AWS

Deploy Organisation

Prerequisites

Overview

Application tiers

Interactive flow

What gets created

Infrastructure code

Non-interactive mode

Available options

Next Steps