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CephalonEngine

Guide

The Guide is the canonical reference for adopting CephalonEngine. Every page here is written for someone who is shipping a real application — not a sample, not a demo, an app that will be on-call for years.

If you only have five minutes, jump to the Quickstart. If you have an afternoon, read the Concepts and pick a deployment target.

5 min

Quickstart

Install Cephalon.Cli, run `cephalon doctor`, scaffold a host, and watch it boot.

Start now 15 min

Installation

Prerequisites, package feeds, CLI install paths, and how to verify your environment.

Set up the toolchain 30 min

Concepts

The engine, modules, capabilities, manifests, and how composition is resolved.

Learn the model 45 min

Architecture

Layered architecture, app models, transport surfaces, and the runtime contract.

Read the architecture Day 2

Deployment

Windows Service, IIS, Azure App Service, Azure Container Apps, Kubernetes, Linux systemd, and Docker.

Pick a target Ongoing

Operations

Observability, dependency health, runtime failure policy, benchmarking, and runbooks.

Operate with confidence

How the Guide is organised

Section titled “How the Guide is organised”
  1. Quickstart — the shortest path from zero to a running host.
  2. Installation — what you need on the machine, and how to set up package feeds for offline or air-gapped scenarios.
  3. Concepts — the smallest model you need in your head to read the rest of the docs.
  4. Architecture — the layers, app models, and runtime contract that the engine guarantees.
  5. Configuration — the Engine:* schema and how options flow into modules.
  6. Deployment — supported hosts and the generated deploy/ folders.
  7. Operations — observability, health, runbooks, and the runtime failure policy.
  8. Compatibility — supported .NET versions, deployment modes, trim/AOT/single-file posture.

Conventions used in this guide

Section titled “Conventions used in this guide”
  • Code blocks are runnable. Where a snippet requires a specific package or directive, the using lines are kept.
  • PowerShell is the default shell for Windows examples. Linux/macOS users can replace pwsh with bash and rerun the equivalent commands.
  • Callouts flag risks (warning), breaking shifts (danger), confirmed behaviour (success), and adoption keys (key).
  • Maturity labels appear on every package mention. Treat anything below M4 as something that may evolve additively. The full taxonomy lives in the maturity audit.