Pior Labs Platform

Pior Labs is a collection of self-hosted productivity tools built around a shared technical foundation.

What began as a finance-tracking application grew into a broader platform. Each new application exposed another gap to solve: private hosting, reliable deployment, consistent design, shared authentication, networking, observability, and maintainable automation.

This repository documents how those pieces fit together. It describes the public architecture, repository boundaries, platform conventions, and roadmap. Production configuration and operational details remain in the private platform-deploy repository.

Goals

• Keep personal application data under direct control.
• Give applications a consistent design, authentication, and deployment foundation.
• Keep applications independently developable and deployable.
• Separate public architecture from private production operations.
• Build repeatable patterns that make future applications easier to add.
• Use AI-assisted development without sacrificing understanding, security, or maintainability.

Current state

The core platform foundation is operational:

• Dashboard, Finance, and the shared Auth service are deployed on the self-hosted server.
• A containerized Caddy edge handles application routing and TLS.
• Split-horizon DNS allows the same *.szarans.ca hostnames to work on the local network and over Tailscale.
• PostgreSQL provides shared database infrastructure with application-specific databases and roles.
• service-auth provides centralized OAuth 2.1 / OpenID Connect SSO.
• Finance has been migrated to the shared authentication, networking, and database model.
• The shared design system is published through GitHub Packages and consumed by applications.
• Production infrastructure and routing configuration are maintained separately in the private platform-deploy repository.

Architecture

flowchart TD
    LAN[LAN clients] --> DNS[Split-horizon DNS]
    TS[Tailscale clients] --> DNS
    DNS --> EDGE[Containerized Caddy edge]

    EDGE --> DASH[Dashboard]
    EDGE --> FIN[Finance]
    EDGE --> AUTH[Authentication service]
    EDGE --> FUTURE[Future applications]

    FIN --> AUTH
    FUTURE --> AUTH

    FIN --> DB[(PostgreSQL)]
    AUTH --> DB
    FUTURE --> DB

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Applications use stable szarans.ca hostnames regardless of whether the client is on the trusted local network or connected through Tailscale. Caddy is the platform entry point, application-facing containers communicate over shared Docker networking, and stateful services use isolated PostgreSQL credentials.

Repository model

Prefix or repository	Responsibility
app-*	User-facing applications
service-*	Independently deployed shared services
package-*	Reusable libraries and packages
platform	Public architecture and platform documentation
platform-deploy	Private production deployment, routing, database provisioning, and operational configuration
.github	Organization profile and shared GitHub configuration
template-webapp	Reusable starting point for new platform applications

Current direction

The original platform migration is complete. Current work is focused on extending and hardening the established foundation:

1. Use the standardized application pattern for new projects, beginning with the Cookbook.
2. Continue reducing production-specific deployment logic inside public application repositories.
3. Standardize observability and deployment verification across services.
4. Document and automate backup and restore procedures.
5. Expand reusable platform conventions as new applications introduce common requirements.
6. Add an MCP-enabled assistant after the application ecosystem is established.

Documentation

• Architecture
• Repository model
• Networking
• Security
• Roadmap
• New web application bootstrap prompt

Status

The core Pior Labs self-hosted platform foundation is operational and under active development. Remaining roadmap items are improvements and new capabilities rather than prerequisites for the current applications to run on the shared platform.