How Specific works

The mental model: one config file that runs your whole system, locally and in production.

Specific is infrastructure-as-code designed for coding agents. Your infrastructure is defined in a single specific.hcl file alongside your application code: how to build, run, and deploy the full system, in both development and production.

Specific is fully generic: it works with any programming language and framework, without SDKs. All connection details reach your code through environment variables.

One file, every environment

A typical specific.hcl:

build "app" {
  base    = "node"
  command = "npm run build"
}

service "web" {
  build = build.app
  command = "npm start"

  endpoint {
    public = true
  }

  env = {
    PORT         = port
    DATABASE_URL = postgres.main.url
  }

  dev {
    command = "npm run dev"
  }

  pre_deploy {
    command = "npm run db:migrate"
  }
}

postgres "main" {}

The same file drives every environment your project runs in:

specific dev runs everything locally (Postgres, services, sync engines) with connection details injected automatically. No .env files.
specific deploy builds the code, provisions managed infrastructure, and rolls out services to Specific Cloud. A project can have multiple deployed environments (production, staging, previews), all defined by the same file.

References like postgres.main.url resolve to the right value in each environment: a local database during development, a managed one per deployed environment.

Building blocks

Block	What it defines
`build`	How to produce artifacts: managed base environments or custom Dockerfiles.
`service`	Long-running processes: web apps, APIs, workers.
`cron`	Scheduled jobs with per-run logs and metrics.
`postgres`	Managed PostgreSQL databases, with optional Reshape zero-downtime migrations and real-time sync.
`storage`	S3-compatible object storage.
`redis`	Redis-compatible caches (Valkey).
`temporal`	Managed Temporal workflow engines for durable workflows.
`secret` / `config`	Parameterized sensitive and environment-specific values.
`volume`	Persistent directories inside services.
`environment`	Per-environment config overrides.

The workflow

Whether you’re a human or a coding agent, working with Specific follows the same loop:

Create or edit specific.hcl.
Run specific check to validate the configuration - always, after every change.
Run specific dev to run the system locally, and specific exec <service> -- <command> for one-off commands like migrations and seeding.
Run specific deploy to ship it.

After deploying, manage the project from the dashboard: logs and metrics, scaling, database browsing, secrets, and custom domains.

Designed for coding agents

Your coding agent writes and maintains specific.hcl: you describe what you want to build, and the agent defines the infrastructure alongside the code. The CLI ships its own LLM-optimized documentation (specific docs), and specific init wires it into your agent’s context. See Coding agents.