Introduction

Lizard is a unified cloud for apps, services, agents, and managed databases. You point it at a repo or a local directory, and Lizard builds it, runs it on isolated micro-VMs, gives it a URL, and keeps it running — no Dockerfile, no YAML, and no local Docker required.

Everything the platform can do is exposed through the lizard CLI (npm package @lizard-build/cli) and the dashboard. This documentation covers both.

npm install -g @lizard-build/cli
lizard login
lizard add -r your-org/your-app   # deploy a GitHub repo

Why Lizard

Deploy anything — Go, Node, Python, Rust, Ruby, PHP, Java, or static sites are auto-detected and built. No buildpack config required.
No Dockerfile needed — the platform’s builder (lizardpack) generates an optimized multi-stage image for you. Bring your own Dockerfile when you want full control.
Managed addons in one command — lizard add postgres redis s3 provisions Postgres, Redis, and S3-compatible object storage, wired into your services by reference.
Git-native — connect a GitHub repo and every push to your branch auto-builds and redeploys.
Isolated by default — each service runs in its own Firecracker micro-VM with a generated *.onlizard.com domain and automatic TLS.
On-demand sandboxes — spin up ephemeral Firecracker micro-VMs for AI agents, code interpreters, and evals via the SDK — boot in milliseconds, snapshot, and tear down. See Sandboxes.
Built for both humans and agents — the same capabilities are available to AI coding agents through an embedded skill and MCP surface.

How it fits together

Lizard organizes everything into a simple hierarchy:

workspace  →  project  →  service  (+ managed addons)

A workspace is your account or organization.
A project groups related services (your app, a worker, a database).
A service is a single deployable unit — built from a GitHub repo or an uploaded tarball.
Managed addons (Postgres, Redis, S3) attach to a project and are referenced by your services.

Read more in Core Concepts → Architecture.

Two ways to drive Lizard

Surface	Best for
CLI (`lizard …`)	Day-to-day deploys, CI, scripting, and AI agents. See the CLI Reference.
Dashboard (`lizard open`)	Visual deploy history, log streaming, metrics, the database/Redis/S3 browsers, secrets, domains, billing, and team management. See Dashboard.

Next steps

Quickstart — install the CLI and ship your first app.
Core Concepts — the workspace → project → service model and the build pipeline.
Deploying — from GitHub, from local code, workers, and scaling.
Managed Addons — Postgres, Redis, and object storage.
CLI Reference — every command, flag, and exit code.

Quickstart