December 2024

DeployNinja

DeployNinja is a deployment platform with GitHub-triggered builds, live logs, AWS-backed delivery, and repeatable release flows.

GitHub Watch demo

Overview

DeployNinja replaces manual deployment scripts with a GitHub-native CI/CD platform. Webhooks trigger automated builds, stream logs in real-time, and deploy to ECS with zero-downtime rolling updates.

Architecture: control plane (Next.js) manages projects and triggers, build server (Node.js) runs Docker builds and pushes to ECR, reverse proxy routes traffic to ECS containers. State in PostgreSQL, logs in ClickHouse, events via Kafka.

How It Was Built

The main technical choices behind the product, from system design to the parts that make it work day to day.

Separated concerns across three services: control plane for project configuration and webhook management, build server for Docker builds and ECR pushes, reverse proxy for routing to ECS containers.
Integrated GitHub webhooks with signature verification, branch filtering, and automatic build triggers on push to configured branches.

Separated concerns across three services: control plane for project configuration and webhook management, build server for Docker builds and ECR pushes, reverse proxy for routing to ECS containers.
Integrated GitHub webhooks with signature verification, branch filtering, and automatic build triggers on push to configured branches.
Implemented log streaming via Kafka topics (build-logs, deployment-logs) with ClickHouse aggregation for real-time tailing and historical query.
Configured ECS rolling updates with health checks, auto-rollback on failure, and S3 for static asset storage.

Impact

Reduced deployment time from about 15 minutes to 4 minutes by removing repeated manual steps.
Live logs and centralized state made failures easier to understand and fix.

Reduced deployment time from about 15 minutes to 4 minutes by removing repeated manual steps.
Live logs and centralized state made failures easier to understand and fix.
Made releases more repeatable because the flow lives in the platform instead of in scattered scripts and local knowledge.

Highlights

Automates the full release flow from GitHub push to production deployment.
Production deployments stay available through rolling updates and automatic rollback.

Automates the full release flow from GitHub push to production deployment.
Production deployments stay available through rolling updates and automatic rollback.
Build and deployment logs are centralized and streamed so teams can debug without server access.