Cloud Hosting Architecture

This guide describes how toorow’s official surfaces are hosted and deployed by the core maintainers on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

If you are deploying your own private instance of toorow, refer to the Self-Hosting Guide for infrastructure setup and configuration instructions.

1. Hosting Topology & Surface Separation

The showcase marketing site, application server, and technical documentation operate as separate surfaces with distinct runtimes, pipelines, and cost profiles:

Surface	Hostname	Technology / Runtime	Scaling & Idle Cost Model
Vitrine / Marketing	`toorow.com`	`web/` Astro Static Site on Firebase Hosting	€0 / month — Serverless CDN with no running instances.
App / Server API	`app.toorow.com`	`mcp-server` (FastMCP) on GCP Cloud Run (`europe-west1`)	€0 when idle — Scale-to-zero (`--min-instances=0`, `--max-instances=4`).
Documentation	`docs.toorow.com`	Mintlify Hosting	Managed documentation platform.

All three surfaces operate under subdomains of toorow.com, enabling shared analytics consent (toorow_consent, Domain=.toorow.com) across the platform.

2. Scale-to-Zero Cloud Run Configuration

To minimize idle costs, the mcp-server Cloud Run service is explicitly configured to scale to zero instances during inactivity, while capping concurrency to prevent runaway billings:

gcloud run deploy mcp-server \
  --image "europe-west1-docker.pkg.dev/${GCP_PROJECT_PROD}/connector/mcp-server:${COMMIT_SHA}" \
  --project "${GCP_PROJECT_PROD}" \
  --region europe-west1 \
  --platform managed \
  --min-instances=0 \
  --max-instances=4 \
  --set-secrets "NANGO_ENCRYPTION_KEY=nango-encryption-key:latest" \
  --set-env-vars "HOST_HEADER_VALIDATION=strict,ALLOWED_HOST=${CLOUD_RUN_HOSTNAME_PROD},PORT=8080,TOOROW_AUTH_MODE=oauth"

Cold Start Trade-Off

Setting --min-instances=0 introduces a minor cold-start latency penalty on initial requests following idle periods. This is acceptable for agent-driven MCP workloads and guarantees €0 compute cost when unused.

3. Deployment Pipelines & GitHub Actions

Server Deployment (`.github/workflows/deploy.yml`)

The backend FastMCP server deployment is governed by GitHub Actions using Workload Identity Federation (WIF) for keyless GCP authentication:

Build & Push: Triggers on push to main (after CI workflow passes). Builds infra/docker/mcp-server/Dockerfile and pushes to GCP Artifact Registry (europe-west1-docker.pkg.dev).
Dev Deployment (deploy-dev): Automatically deploys the built image to the dev Cloud Run environment.
Production Deployment (deploy-prod): Gated by GitHub Environment production. Requires manual approval by an authorized maintainer (Human Gate) before executing production deployment.

Vitrine Deployment (`web/deploy.sh`)

The showcase marketing site uses a developer-driven deployment script to build the Astro static site into web/dist and deploy directly to Firebase Hosting:

cd web
firebase login
./deploy.sh

Next Steps & Cross-References

Self-Hosting Guide

Learn how to deploy toorow on your own cloud or container infrastructure.

Security & Constraints

Review host header guards, OAuth verification, and security invariants.

Environment Reference

Inspect required environment variables for Cloud Run deployment.

Prerequisites

Check GCP service permissions and IAM requirements.

Self-Hosted Deployment

Self-Hosted Engineering & Connectors

Cloud Hosting Architecture

1. Hosting Topology & Surface Separation

2. Scale-to-Zero Cloud Run Configuration

Cold Start Trade-Off

3. Deployment Pipelines & GitHub Actions

Server Deployment (`.github/workflows/deploy.yml`)

Vitrine Deployment (`web/deploy.sh`)

Next Steps & Cross-References

Self-Hosting Guide

Security & Constraints

Environment Reference

Prerequisites

​1. Hosting Topology & Surface Separation

​2. Scale-to-Zero Cloud Run Configuration

​Cold Start Trade-Off

​3. Deployment Pipelines & GitHub Actions

​Server Deployment (.github/workflows/deploy.yml)

​Vitrine Deployment (web/deploy.sh)

​Next Steps & Cross-References

Self-Hosting Guide

Security & Constraints

Environment Reference

Prerequisites

1. Hosting Topology & Surface Separation

2. Scale-to-Zero Cloud Run Configuration

Cold Start Trade-Off

3. Deployment Pipelines & GitHub Actions

Server Deployment (`.github/workflows/deploy.yml`)

Vitrine Deployment (`web/deploy.sh`)

Next Steps & Cross-References