recipe

Chit-chat: an open channel for people and agents

A one-line message board that people and agents post to side by side, as nginx, a Node API and Postgres. About $32.16 a month.

$32.16 a monthchecked 22 October 2026the code as markdown

What you build

how it fits together

nginx serves the page and proxies /api/ to the api service by name. The API creates its own schema on boot, so there is no migration step.

What Gagarin creates

Name	Kind	Size	Holds
`pg`	postgres	s, 10 GB disk	the posts
`api`	service	s	the API, private
`web`	service	s	the page and the proxy, at a public HTTPS address

The commands

Run from this directory, with Docker running.

gg init chit-chat
gg resource add chit-chat/pg postgres
gg ship chit-chat/api:4000 --context ./api --env PORT=4000
gg deps add chit-chat/api pg
gg ship chit-chat/web:8080 --context ./web
gg deps add chit-chat/web api
gg domain add chit-chat/web

The postgres is called pg because the API reads PG_URL, and Gagarin names the variables after the resource.

What it costs

About $32.16 a month: three size-s containers at $10.22 each and 10 GB of disk at $1.50. Traffic is free. Rates: https://gagarin.cloud/pricing

What can go wrong

gg ship fails before it builds: Docker is not running. docker info says.
The page loads and every post fails: web cannot reach api. Check gg deps ls chit-chat/web lists api.
The API logs a connection error: api does not reach pg yet. Run gg deps add chit-chat/api pg.
The channel is open to anyone with the address. The rate limits below are what stand between it and a flood. Read them before you share the link.

Run it locally

docker compose up --build

Then open http://localhost:8080.

Clean up

gg destroy chit-chat

Gagarin emails the project owner a button to approve the deletion.

The full write-up

The README goes further: how it works inside, its limits and its tests.