Quiver

Quiver is the host I built for the pile of small web apps that don’t justify a full Kubernetes deployment - a one-page utility, a report viewer, a 200-line toy. You drop a directory and it gets a working hostname, HTTPS, and its own access rules. The whole point is that an app you hit twice a month should cost nothing the rest of the time.

How it works

• Socket activation, zero idle RAM. A systemd .socket unit per app owns the listening socket; the app process doesn’t exist until a request arrives. A shared middleware exits the process after an idle window, and the armed socket cold-starts a fresh one on the next hit. At rest the whole box is ~35 MB; each awake app adds ~19 MB.
• An app is just a directory. A manifest picks a Python ASGI callable or any binary (a loopback proxy fronts non-cooperating binaries so they get the same activation contract), static files are served directly, and one writable data/ path holds SQLite.
• Per-app access, reconciled to the edge. Each app declares LAN-only or public- behind-SSO in its own access.yaml. A root reconciler makes the CDN match it live - DNS record, tunnel route, and an SSO application whose policy lists exactly who may sign in.
• Static artifacts and reports. It also hosts a durable static store with a searchable browser, so generated reports and one-off pages have a single findable home instead of scattering across ad-hoc servers.

Notes

The design decision that carries everything is Restart=no plus a per-app idle-stop: an automatic restart would defeat idle-stop and pin memory forever. That single constraint is what lets the host fit dozens of apps in 1 GB.