Deployment Modes

Signals supports four deployment modes, from local development to full cloud production.

Mode	Compute	K8s	Services
Laptop	Local	k3d (optional)	devenv
Workstation	Local	RKE2 (optional)	devenv + GPU
Hybrid	Local + AWS	RKE2 (local) + RKE2 (AWS)	Split
Full AWS	AWS EC2	RKE2	All remote

Laptop Development

Local-only with devenv services (PostgreSQL, KDC). Optional k3d cluster for Kubernetes workloads.

devenv up                              # Start PostgreSQL + KDC
devenv tasks run k8s:provision         # Optional: create k3d cluster
devenv tasks run k8s:deploy-dask       # Optional: deploy Dask on k3d

Best for: iterating on engine code, feature development, BDD scenarios at Tier 0-1.

Workstation

Local devenv with optional RKE2 for production-grade Kubernetes. Suitable for GPU-accelerated workloads.

devenv up                              # Start core services
devenv tasks run k8s:deploy-dask       # Deploy Dask on RKE2

Best for: integration testing, GPU workloads, running Tier 2 scenarios.

Hybrid (Workstation + AWS)

Local development environment with AWS RKE2 cluster for distributed compute. The engine and visualization run locally; heavy computation is offloaded to AWS.

devenv up                              # Local services
devenv tasks run aws:provision         # Provision AWS infrastructure
devenv tasks run aws:deploy            # Deploy RKE2 + Dask on AWS

Best for: distributed workloads that exceed local capacity, Tier 3 scenarios.

Full AWS

Everything runs on AWS EC2 with RKE2. Access via Cloudflare Zero Trust (WARP device posture).

devenv tasks run aws:provision         # VPC, EC2, S3
devenv tasks run aws:inventory         # Generate Ansible inventory
devenv tasks run aws:deploy            # Full stack deployment
devenv tasks run aws:verify            # Post-deployment checks

Best for: production deployments, air-gap environments, Tier 3 full-stack validation.

Any mode with Kubernetes can use Zarf for disconnected deployment. The air-gap variant removes the NAT gateway (airgap_mode = true in OpenTofu), relying on VPC endpoints for S3 access and the Zarf internal registry for container images.

devenv tasks run aws:provision         # With airgap_mode = true
ansible-playbook playbooks/airgap-deploy.yml

See Air-Gap (Zarf) for details.

Infrastructure Layers

Each deployment mode uses a subset of the infrastructure stack:

Layer	Tool	Purpose
Provisioning	OpenTofu	AWS VPC, EC2, S3, Cloudflare
Configuration	Ansible	RKE2, Dask, services, tunnels
Packaging	Zarf	Air-gap K8s deployment
Dev Iteration	Tilt	Live-reload on RKE2/k3d
Policy	OPA/Conftest	Guardrails for IaC and K8s

See the Infrastructure section for detailed documentation of each layer.

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