Internal Tools Deployment Platform
Hypermedia based low-code internal tools for teams.
Runbook automation like Rundeck, custom apps like Retool.
What is Clace?
Clace™ is an Apache-2.0 licensed platform for developing and deploying low-code internal tools. Clace is built in Go and runs on Linux, macOS and Windows.
Clace can auto-generate a form interface for backend actions. Clace can be used to build custom Hypermedia driven apps. Clace implements an AppServer for containerized apps. Clace provides GitOps, blue-green deployment, OAuth, TLS certs, secrets management.
How does it work?
Clace can build web interface based on app configuration, without requiring any frontend code to be written. For custom UI, Clace uses server rendered HTML to build Hypermedia driven apps.
Clace implements a reverse proxy and application server, programmable at the app level in Starlark. Clace also does container orchestration using Docker or Podman, allowing deployment of apps in any language.
What can it be used for?
Clace can be used instead of Rundeck to build form interfaces for runbook automation. For more customizable UI, Clace can be used to build server rendered internal tools, as against SPA/client focused solutions like Retool.
Apps built in low-code frameworks like Streamlit/Gradio/FastHTML etc can be easily deployed using Clace. Clace is ideal for teams looking to securely deploy internal tools.
Autogenerated web-apps
Auto generate simple web interfaces for existing CLI tools and API endpoints.
Container management
Build and deploy containerized web apps, with Docker or Podman.
GitOps Workflow
Blue-green (staged) deployments, versioning and preview environments with no infra to manage.
No build step
Backend and frontend development with no build artifacts to manage, deploy directly from the source repo.
Scale down to zero
Apps are initialized lazily, on demand: scale down to zero automatically.
Cross-platform
Clace runs natively on Linux, Windows and OSX; use for app dev and then for app hosting
Comparison with other low-code solutions
There are many low-code solutions for building internal tools. Most are JavaScript focused solutions which providing UI components which can be configured using a drag and drop UI builder. Backend teams stick to using tools like Rundeck for web interfaces to avoid heavyweight UI solutions.
Clace provides a solution which is focused on providing simple UI for backend actions. Clace allows customizing the UI using server rendering, without requiring any client side JavaScript code. Clace is implemented in Go, avoiding the JavaScript dependency challenges.
Comparison with other deployment solutions
Using Kubernetes for internal tools deployment requires glueing together CI/CD with ArgoCD/FluxCD and IDP(Internal Developer Portal) for app lifecycle management. Managing the infrastructure requires more work than the actual app code.
Clace provides a integrated solution focused on supporting deployment of internal tools. Clace handles GitOps, container image management, blue-green staged deployment and OAuth based app access controls.
How is Clace different?
Clace is built for teams to be able to securely develop and deploy internal tools. Code and config changes are blue-green staged for deployment. Multiple apps can be updated atomically (all-or-nothing), there is no broken state after deployment failures.
Clace is built for the full application management lifecycle across a team, not just the initial installation. Clace has security sand-boxing features which allow operations teams to easily manage applications through GitOps while allowing development teams to freely make code changes.