Show HN: Canine – A Heroku alternative built on Kubernetes

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Project concept & positioning

  • Canine aims to provide a Heroku-like experience on top of Kubernetes, especially for self‑hosting, indie hackers, and small setups.
  • It’s positioned as “closer to the metal” than Vercel/Coolify-style tools while still hiding K8s details for most users, but allowing direct K8s access later if needed.
  • Commenters note this space is crowded and difficult: Heroku-like DX is hard to match, and many users are satisfied with simpler tools (Coolify, Dokku, CapRover, Kamal, Portainer, etc.).

Architecture & capabilities

  • The Canine app runs outside the cluster and manages Kubernetes (or k3s) remotely; this is to support very small VPSs (~512MB) without consuming cluster resources.
  • Docker Compose in the repo is only for local development; production targets are:
    • A single k3s node (e.g., Hetzner VPS).
    • An existing Kubernetes cluster (including managed ones like DigitalOcean).
  • Multi-node cluster creation on providers like Hetzner is not yet automated; users must bring their own cluster (Terraform examples exist but aren’t integrated).
  • Built on Helm charts and the K8s ecosystem; automatic safe upgrades of charts are flagged as unsolved in general.
  • Questions remain about storage, secrets, review apps, drag‑and‑drop deploys, and “git push/Procfile” semantics; not all are answered in the thread.

Kubernetes complexity and alternatives

  • Strong divide on K8s complexity:
    • Some say modern distros/managed K8s make setup “one YAML and an SSH key” and that real complexity is in surrounding infra (certs, CI/CD, bare metal, etc.).
    • Others argue bare-metal and self‑hosted K8s remain intricate (PVs, storage classes, networking, DNS, firewalls), citing painful debugging experiences.
  • Helm is called out as particularly unwieldy despite being useful.
  • Docker Swarm (including “Swarm mode”) is discussed as a simpler alternative with lower long‑term expertise cost; others feel k3s already occupies that niche.
  • There’s a related debate about env patterns: some advocate ephemeral per‑branch environments + prod; others defend traditional dev/stage/prod for most teams.

Use cases, costs, and production concerns

  • Several commenters have idle N100 NUCs or small servers and see Canine as a way to finally use K8s without deep expertise.
  • Single‑VM setups are recognized as fine for staging/side‑projects but not truly production‑grade due to lack of redundancy and scalability.
  • Multiple comments highlight frustration with rising PaaS/cloud bills vs cheap hardware; one example cites ~$400k/year on a PaaS for resources that would cost < $8k to buy outright.

UX, docs, and polish

  • The “Why you should NOT use Canine” section is polarizing: some like the humor, others want a more candid list of real drawbacks (single maintainer, ops burden, etc.).
  • Landing page UX issue: background cards can be swiped; README and homepage are seen as unclear about cluster requirements and K3s vs “real” K8s.
  • The K8s crash‑course docs are praised as unusually approachable, though commenters point out small technical inaccuracies (Docker vs OCI, node limits, NodePort description, license mismatch).