AI-native product engineering · Our architecture
A skeleton every product is assembled on.
Serverless on AWS, one account slice per product, building blocks on top. What it is, why we chose it, and what it costs, said plainly.
01The reason
Why a reference architecture at all.
No product starts from zero
Identity, data, events, storage, delivery and observability are solved once and reused. Custom work goes to what makes your product different.
Cost follows use
Scale to zero. When nobody uses it, it costs almost nothing. No reserved capacity disguised as serverless.
Built to change
Modules with explicit contracts and events between them, so one part can change without rebuilding the rest.
02The modules
Ten modules, each one a concept with its purpose and its rules.
- 01
API
Expose the product's interfaces.
- 02
Compute
Run business logic and workflows.
- 03
AI
Model access, inference, evaluation, guardrails.
- 04
Events
Decouple contexts through events and queues.
- 05
Data
Entities, relationships, access patterns.
- 06
Storage
Documents, artifacts, large payloads.
- 07
Identity and access
Authentication, authorization, tenancy.
- 08
Observability
Logs, traces, metrics, cost.
- 09
Delivery
Pipeline, artifacts, promotion into your accounts.
- 10
Frontend hosting
Static sites, previews per change.
03Where it runs
Your product gets its own slice. Complete, isolated, portable.
| Account | What it holds | Why it is separate |
|---|---|---|
| Security | Audit trail and logs of the product | A regulator or investor reads this one, never VM8's |
| Shared | Pipeline, registry, DNS of the product | What every environment needs, once |
| Dev and validation | Previews per change, the validation environment | Try before you ship, at near-zero cost |
| Production | The live product | Stricter rules: regions, backups, no direct hands |
| Tenants | One account per customer that needs a silo | Isolation when your customers require it |
Security
What it holdsAudit trail and logs of the productWhy it is separateA regulator or investor reads this one, never VM8'sShared
What it holdsPipeline, registry, DNS of the productWhy it is separateWhat every environment needs, onceDev and validation
What it holdsPreviews per change, the validation environmentWhy it is separateTry before you ship, at near-zero costProduction
What it holdsThe live productWhy it is separateStricter rules: regions, backups, no direct handsTenants
What it holdsOne account per customer that needs a siloWhy it is separateIsolation when your customers require it
Accounts are portable: a product that moves to its own organization is not rebuilt. It takes its accounts with it.
04Pros and cons
What it gives, and what it costs.
What it gives
Near-zero cost at rest
Pay per request and transfer. Ideal while a product finds its market.
Yours, from day one
Deployed in your name. You see every resource and can revoke our access.
Audit-ready
Every product has its own evidence trail, readable by a third party without entering VM8's organization.
Leaves with you
Nothing at runtime depends on VM8. Blocks are deployed software, not a service you call.
What it costs, said plainly
AWS, explicitly
True serverless means AWS. Another cloud or on-premises is another architecture, not a setting. We say so up front.
A small fixed cost per account
Governance tooling costs a few dollars a month per account. The price of a slice that is complete and portable.
Blocks are used, not owned
You hold the right to use and configure every block version you run. The blocks themselves stay VM8's and keep evolving.
Event-driven thinking
Contexts talk through events. Teams used to one big database adapt; the model built in discovery makes it natural.
05How it reaches you
From a merged change to your account, without hands on servers.
- 01Pull request · Reviewed, approved
- 02Pipeline · Build and test
- 03Artifact · Versioned
- 04Validation · Your sign-off
- 05Production · Your account
Deployment runs with delegated, revocable access into your account. Every environment shows which version is live and what is waiting for promotion.