Building your Product using Compose¶

This guide covers the Compose strategy for Step 3 of the Starter Kit. Follow the same five-step sequence for every strategy:

Start with the agent skills: install and authenticate the CLI, then install the appropriate skills.
Select the deployment model (2.1), then onboard the required accounts (2.2).
Reuse your assets and build in development: use the strategy-specific instructions on this page to create one working baseline.
Test the customer journey and release process: verify application readiness, the promised lifecycle, and repeatable releases.
Prepare for production and launch: add the customer experience, security, operations, and commercial configuration you need.

Getting Started¶

Compose is a powerful tool for defining and running multi-container applications and is used widely by many-many open source projects as a goto mechanism to deploy projects locally. With Compose, you can specify all the services, networks, volumes, and their relationships in a single, easy-to-read YAML file.

To start using Compose, you'll need to define a omnistrate-compose.yaml file that describes your application's services and their configurations.

Here is an Compose file to bring up Redis:

version: '3.9'

services:
  redis:
    image: redis:alpine
    ports:
      - '6379:6379'

Validate your compose config¶

Before you submit your compose spec, you may want to validate the compose specification by running it locally on your desktop:

docker-compose up

Extend your compose specification to build your distribution channel¶

We have defined several compose tags to allow you to extend your compose specification to build your distribution channel, ex - SaaS. Here are some examples:

Configure your cloud provider account using x-omnistrate-service-plan tag
Make a Resource distributed with multiple replicas using x-omnistrate-compute
Add a reverse proxy to HTTP-based services or other capabilities using x-omnistrate-capabilities
Customize visibility, logging, metering of a service using: x-customer-integrations
Customize API parameters for launching the service using x-omnistrate-api-params
Inject custom code at different phases of your SaaS using x-omnistrate-actionhooks
Customize the compute / network / storage parameters of a service via x-omnistrate-compute and other corresponding tags

For more details on all the compose tags, please read more about Omnistrate Compose Extensions

Use AI to easily extend your compose specification¶

Extend my compose specification to build my Hosted SaaS service with dedicated tenancy and basic observability

Example compose config¶

Build your Product using your compose specification¶

Create a Compose specification file and build your service:

omnistrate-ctl build --file omnistrate-compose.yaml --product-name "Your SaaS Product Name" --description "Your service description"

Select the intended development environment and release a test version as described in Step 3. After building, test the customer journey before production promotion.

PostgreSQL Container Example¶

If you are starting with a container image rather than an existing Compose file, wrap it in a Compose service definition:

version: '3.9'
services:
  postgres:
    image: postgres:16
    ports:
      - '5432:5432'
    environment:
      - SECURITY_CONTEXT_USER_ID=999
      - SECURITY_CONTEXT_GROUP_ID=999
      - POSTGRES_USER=username
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password
      - PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/data/dbdata
    volumes:
      - ./data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

This defines the image, port, static environment, and persistent storage for one resource. Extend it with your plan, account configuration, compute, and capabilities using the sections above.

Warning

The password is illustrative and the image uses a major-version tag. Use supported secrets and pin the image to a tested version or digest. Explicitly configure your intended deployment account; do not rely on an unspecified default account for production.

For free and premium plans, plan-version updates, and configuration and secret-file mounts, continue with the Compose Plan Lifecycle Example.

More Real-World Examples¶

List of examples demonstrating how to build various types of applications using Omnistrate. Each example provides step-by-step guidance, complete configuration files, and best practices for different use cases.

You can access the full examples index here.

Dive Deeper¶

Now that you have a working Compose-based SaaS Product, explore the build guides to add production-grade capabilities:

Compose deployment strategy — Browse the Compose-specific strategy and specification reference
Compose Troubleshooting — Diagnose failed Compose deployments and workflows
Compose Specification Reference — Complete reference for all Omnistrate-specific Compose extensions (x-omnistrate-* tags)
API Parameters — Let your customers configure deployments with custom parameters
System Parameters — Use dynamic system-generated values in your Compose spec
Deployment Models — Configure hosted, BYOC, or air-gapped deployment models
Tenancy Types — Choose between shared, dedicated, or hybrid tenancy
Action Hooks — Run custom logic during provisioning, scaling, or upgrades
Resource Dependencies — Set up dependencies between resources for multi-component applications

Additional Resources¶

Compose Documentation — The official documentation for Docker Compose
Compose File Reference — Detailed guide to the Compose file format
Docker Hub — Explore container images for use with your Compose specification

Next: Step 4: Test the customer journey and release process, then Step 5: Prepare for production and launch.