Architecture design
Architecture design is deciding which part of your product runs in each customer's environment and which part stays in your cloud. Each customer requirement has a smallest answer, from only their key to the whole product.
When the customer must be able to cut off your access
Customer-managed keys
Your product stays in your cloud, shared or dedicated to them. Their data is encrypted with a key they hold.
When AI calls must run on their own model account
Local AI models
Your hosted product sends its AI calls to their model account. Their bucket and sandboxes work the same way.
When customer data stays in their environment
Control plane ⇄ Data plane
The part that handles customer data runs with them. Sign-in, billing, and the UI stay with you.
When you reach a private cluster, database, or device
Agent or connector
A small agent next to their systems reaches them locally and connects out to you.
When everything runs with them, even air-gapped
Whole product
Every service and its storage runs in their environment.
Combinations
The options combine. A data plane in the customer's cloud can also use their key. A data plane dedicated to one customer in your cloud, plus their key, is the common "single-tenant, BYOK" setup.
How to choose
Pick the smallest option that meets the requirement as the buyer stated it. Everything you deploy runs in every customer's environment, so each component is one more thing to support in each of them.
Write down the options you rejected, and why: the next customer will ask the same questions.
Data and connections
Classify your data
Sort every field into content, derived data, credentials, and metadata, and agree with the buyer on what may leave.
Connect your backend
How your backend and each deployment talk, and how browsers reach a deployment directly.
Already shipping it
If you already ship a Helm chart, Terraform module, or ECS task, Remote Operator lets your team operate it across customers: one outbound-only container added next to it.
A coding agent can work through these choices with the alien-architecture skill and write a decision record you can review. See Build with an AI agent.
Next
- Control plane ⇄ Data plane: the most common architecture.
- Classify your data: decide what may leave.
- Describe your stack: write the chosen piece in
alien.ts.
How Alien works
The one-time initial setup the customer's admin runs, the ongoing management Alien does on every release, and what Alien can and can't do in a customer's account.
Control plane ⇄ Data plane
Keep the shared part of your product in your cloud and run the part that handles customer data wherever each customer needs it, from a shared deployment in your cloud to the customer's own account.