Krewire Workloads

Krewire unifies eight distinct architectural workload kinds under one command-line interface (kiw) and one declarative devtool configuration (krewire.yaml).

The workload is declared in your project's krewire.yaml via the project.kind field. kiw uses this setting to drive the correct compiler, dev server, and deployment pipeline:

project:
  name: "my-service"
  kind: "service" # app, cli, site, book, worker, service, infra, runtime
  version: "0.1.0"

The 8 Workloads Matrix

1. Fullstack Monolith (app)

The app workload produces a single, self-contained static Go binary that embeds static assets, templates, database migrations, and HTTP routing:

Characteristics

• Zero External Dependencies: Built on Go's net/http and embed.FS. No external web servers (e.g. Apache, Nginx) required for local development or basic deployment.
• Integrated Template Engine: Server-Side Rendering (SSR) via html/template or .kiw component compilation.
• REST & JSON APIs: Expressive routing with groups, parameter binding, and RFC 7807 Problem Details.
• Modular Monolith Ready (KWF-5ZHQV): Internal domain boundaries allow future extraction of services without code rewrites.

Scaffolding & Running

kiw new my-app --app
cd my-app
kiw run

2. Terminal CLI & TUI (cli)

The cli workload is tailored for building command-line utilities, developer tools, and rich interactive terminal user interfaces:

Characteristics

• Terminal Model: Powered by framework/tui with an Elm/Bubble Tea-inspired Model-Update-View architecture.
• Flag Parsing & Commands: POSIX-compliant flag parser with automatic --help generation and exit-code discipline (libs/core).
• Structured Logging: Integrated with Go's log/slog for structured, colorized terminal output.

Scaffolding & Running

kiw new my-cli --cli
cd my-cli
kiw run -- --verbose

3. Static Site Generator (site)

The site workload provides an ultra-fast static site generator powered by the .kiw component DSL:

Characteristics

• File-Based Routing: pages/index.kiw serves /; pages/about.kiw serves /about.
• Zero Client-Side JS: Emits pure semantic HTML and scoped CSS by default.
• Tailwind CSS Integration: Automatically detects tailwind.config.js and compiles minified utility classes.
• Incremental Builds: Fast rebuilds during development (kiw dev) with millisecond turnaround.

Scaffolding & Running

kiw new my-site --site
cd my-site
kiw dev # Starts dev server at localhost:8080 with live reload

4. Technical Book (book)

The book workload transforms Markdown manuscripts into responsive, reader-friendly documentation portals via the integrated mdbind engine:

Characteristics

• Automated Chapter Numbering: Numbered directory and file prefixes (01-overview.md) map to 1. Overview, 1.1 Subchapter, etc.
• Responsive Navigation: Interactive collapsible sidebar, chapter filter search input, and mobile drawer toggler.
• Dark/Light Theming: Persistent theme switcher syncing with OS preferences via localStorage.
• Hybrid Site Coexistence: A book can be mounted cleanly under /docs/ while an SSG landing page owns / in the same output directory.

Scaffolding & Running

kiw new my-docs --book
cd my-docs
kiw dev

5. Background Worker (worker)

The worker workload runs background asynchronous job processors, distributed task queues, and scheduled cron jobs:

Characteristics

• Robust Retries & Backoff: Configurable exponential backoff, jitter, and maximum retry attempts.
• Dead-Letter Queues (DLQ): Failed jobs are safely quarantined for inspection and replay.
• Graceful Shutdown: Respects OS signals (SIGINT, SIGTERM), draining active tasks before exit.

Running

kiw run --worker

6. Microservice (service)

The service workload equips high-throughput Go microservices with cloud-native distributed service patterns:

Characteristics

• Service Registry & Discovery: First-class integrations with Consul, etcd, NATS, and Kubernetes DNS.
• API Gateway Routing: Path rewriting, weighted canary traffic shifting, and token bucket rate limiting.
• Resilience Primitives: Circuit breakers, request timeouts, and concurrency bulkheads.
• Distributed Tracing: Native OpenTelemetry (OTel) instrumentation with W3C traceparent propagation.

Running

kiw run --service

7. Cloud Infrastructure as Code (infra)

The infra workload allows developers to declare cloud architecture directly in Go:

Characteristics

• Declarative Go Structs: Define VPCs, databases, object storage, and compute clusters using typed Go declarations instead of HCL or YAML.
• Deterministic Planning: kiw deploy --plan generates an execution graph with zero side-effects before applying.
• Provider Support: Multi-cloud drivers covering AWS (ECS, Lambda, RDS, S3, CloudFront) and Kubernetes (Deployments, Services, Ingress).

Running

kiw deploy --plan
kiw infra apply

8. WebAssembly Runtime (runtime)

The runtime workload compiles Go directly to WebAssembly (GOOS=js GOARCH=wasm) to power interactive browser experiences:

Characteristics

• Virtual DOM Diffing: High-performance Go VDOM tree with partial DOM patching.
• Interactive Islands: Render complete static HTML via SSR, then selectively hydrate dynamic widgets (data-kiw-island, hydrate="visible|idle|load").
• Standard Toolchain: Compiles with standard go build—no experimental compilers or JS bundlers required.

Running

kiw build --wasm

Summary

By selecting a workload kind in krewire.yaml, developers access tailored ergonomics while retaining the universal benefits of the Go runtime and standard library.

Proceed to 1.5 Upgrade Guide → to understand versioning, deprecations, and configuration migrations.