Where it actually runs
This is the shape of the whole project, and it is worth knowing because it explains most of the failures this deployment has had. Every one of them was a piece of this diagram answering a different question than the one being asked — a build that succeeded while the site served an older commit, a checkout where the database is deliberately absent, a project left pointing at the source directory instead of the built one.
One process runs the bot's gateway and the console's web server together, because they share the database and the live client. Its free tier sleeps when nobody knocks — which is why the pages a stranger reads first do not live here.
A CDN with no bandwidth ceiling, so a link that does well costs nothing. It serves the marketing site and this hub, and the live numbers on both come from the same public endpoint on the bot's own host — a page served from a cache still has to ask for its figures.
Where the code lives and where each host's build is triggered from. The repository is private and this hub deliberately links to nothing inside it: a public page pointing at a private path is a 404 with extra steps.
An outside process checking the host on a schedule, which is the only reading here that comes from neither of the other two. Its monitors are read by the background loop and cached, so this page can be left open all day without ever costing it a request.
Two decisions, written down
These were not defaults. Both are the kind of choice that is cheap now and expensive to reverse, so they are recorded here rather than left in a commit message.
The front door was served by the same process that runs the bot, and that process is on a free tier that sleeps — so the page a stranger reads before deciding to trust this thing was shut whenever nobody had knocked recently. Free and always reachable are the whole requirement, and the field is narrower than it looks:
| Host | Free bandwidth | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pages | unlimited | chosen — no ceiling in either direction |
| Netlify | ~100 GB / month | free until it isn't |
| Vercel | ~100 GB / month | free until it isn't |
| GitHub Pages | ~100 GB / month | not available on this plan |
Only one of those has no ceiling at all, in either direction. The other two are free until a link does well, and then they are a bill — which is the one thing "free forever" cannot survive.
A public host must not hold a credential that can change a server's configuration, so this site cannot. It is built from the bot's own registry, its own changelog and its own public readings, and its one network call is a merge of two endpoints that are already public and already answer with counts instead of names.
Everything that writes — switches, the composer, scheduled messages, the per-server identity — hands off to the console on the bot's own process, which asks who you are first and scopes every answer to the servers you actually administer.
Settings
Two kinds, and the difference matters: runtime settings are read by the running bot, and build settings are read by whichever process renders these pages. A build setting that is absent produces a page missing something — and no error anywhere, because the page has no process behind it to raise. That is exactly how the front door shipped without its invite button.
not read from here — this page was built on a machine that is not the deployment, so it asks the bot's own host instead
Of 53 the code knows about. A default is used for each one, and most defaults are perfectly fine.
Essential, security or capability settings — the absences an operator can act on. The rest are tuning, and leaving them alone is a decision.
Read by the running bot. Absent here means a feature is limited.
— presentRead by whatever renders these pages. Absent here means a page quietly loses something and nothing raises.
— present| Kind | What it means | Missing | Of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essential | A feature cannot work at all without it. | — | 1 |
| Security | Something is reachable that should not be. | — | 4 |
| Capability | A feature works, but with less than it could do. | — | 13 |
| Tuning | A default is in use. Often fine. | — | 31 |
| Host | The platform provides it; absent means the host is not set up. | — | 4 |
The pipeline