llms.txt

Services

A Service in Hydron represents a single deployable component of your application. Most projects have one or more services — for example, a web application might have an API service, a frontend service, and a database service.

How services are created

Services are created in two ways:

  1. Automatically detected — When you connect a Git repository, the AI analyzes your code and detects services based on the project structure, entry points, and configuration files
  2. Manually added — You can add services through the chat or project settings

Service properties

Each service has the following properties:

PropertyDescription
NameA unique identifier within the project (e.g., api-server, frontend)
TypeThe kind of service (web server, worker, database, cache, etc.)
SourceWhere the code comes from (Git repository, Docker image)
DockerfileThe Docker configuration for building and running the service
Environment variablesConfiguration values injected at runtime
PortsNetwork ports the service exposes
Health checkEndpoint and settings for monitoring service health
DependenciesOther services this one depends on

Viewing services

Services are displayed in the right sidebar of the chat interface under the Services tab.

The Services panel showing detected services with their configurations

Accepting and rejecting services

After code analysis, detected services are in a pending state. You need to review and either accept or reject each one:

  • Accept — Include this service in the infrastructure plan and deployment
  • Reject — Exclude this service from deployment

Only accepted services are included when generating infrastructure plans.

Environment variables

Each service can have its own set of environment variables. These are injected into the Docker container at runtime.

Adding environment variables

You can add environment variables in several ways:

  • Automatically detected — The AI extracts variables referenced in your code during analysis
  • Through the chat — Tell the AI: "Set DATABASE_URL to postgres://..."
  • Through the sidebar — Click on a service and add variables in the configuration panel

Variable enrichment

Hydron can automatically enrich environment variables by detecting common patterns:

  • Database connection strings
  • API keys and secrets
  • Port configurations
  • Service discovery URLs (connecting your services to each other)

Shared secrets

When multiple services need the same environment variable (e.g., a shared database URL), Hydron can automatically configure cross-service references so you only define the value once.

Dockerfiles

Every service needs a Dockerfile to define how it's built and run. Hydron handles this in three ways:

  1. Existing Dockerfile — If your repository already has a Dockerfile, Hydron uses it
  2. AI-generated — The AI creates an optimized Dockerfile based on the detected framework
  3. Custom — You can provide or edit a Dockerfile through the chat

Editing Dockerfiles

Ask the AI to modify the Dockerfile for any service:

  • "Use a multi-stage build for the frontend service"
  • "Change the Node.js version to 20-alpine"
  • "Add a health check command to the API Dockerfile"

Service dependencies

Services can depend on other services. For example:

api-server ──depends on──> postgres
api-server ──depends on──> redis
frontend   ──depends on──> api-server

Dependencies affect:

  • Startup order — Dependent services start after their dependencies
  • Networking — Dependent services can reach their dependencies via internal DNS
  • Health checks — A service isn't considered healthy until its dependencies are healthy

Locking services

You can lock a service to prevent accidental changes. A locked service:

  • Cannot have its Dockerfile modified
  • Cannot have environment variables changed
  • Cannot be removed from the project

This is useful once you've finalized a service's configuration and don't want it accidentally modified during further iterations.

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