Architecture

The production stack (docker-compose.prod.yml) is a set of containers, all driven by the same .env. The app image is served with FrankenPHP.

Services

Service	Role
app	FrankenPHP web server (serves HTTP; runs migrations on boot)
reverb	WebSocket server for real-time broadcasting
queue	Queue worker (queue:work) — sends mail, delivers jobs
scheduler	Scheduled tasks (schedule:work) — due scheduled messages, invitation pruning
pgsql	PostgreSQL database (named volume pgsql-data)
meilisearch	Full-text search index (version-scoped named volume)
redis	Cache, session, and queue backend (named volume redis-data)

Every app process (app, reverb, queue, scheduler) waits for pgsql, redis, and meilisearch to report healthy before it starts.

Data flow

• HTTP requests hit app (FrankenPHP) behind your reverse proxy.
• Real-time updates are broadcast over WebSockets by reverb; the browser connects to it through your TLS proxy.
• Background work (email, scheduled message delivery) runs on queue and scheduler.
• Search queries go to meilisearch; the index is derived from Postgres and rebuilt with php artisan search:sync when needed.

Storage backends

Cache, session, and the queue all use the Redis driver (CACHE_STORE / SESSION_DRIVER=redis, QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis, with REDIS_HOST=redis). Broadcasting uses Reverb. Redis persists to a named volume with appendonly enabled, so queued jobs survive a restart.

Persistent volumes

Volume	Contents
pgsql-data	PostgreSQL database
the-desk-meili-<version>	Meilisearch index (version-scoped)
redis-data	Cache, session, queued jobs
storage-app	Uploaded files

These survive docker compose down / up. See Upgrading for how the version-scoped Meilisearch volume behaves across upgrades.