Build and start settings

Dockerfile or Railpack, build and start commands, release commands, health checks, watch paths and deploy on push.

A service’s Settings → Build & start controls how Warden turns the repository into a running app. Changes apply from the next deploy.

Dockerfile or Railpack

If the Dockerfile path exists (from the Root directory), Warden builds with it. Otherwise Railpack works out how to build the app, and the Build command and Start command override what it picks. Each command is one line; join several with &&.

Websites

For a static site (Vite, Astro, plain HTML), set Built site folder to the folder the build produces, for example dist (or . for files at the repository root). Railpack serves it with its own web server.

Leave Start command empty for a website: a start command switches static serving off.

Release command

Runs once in the new version before it goes live, for example npx prisma migrate deploy. If it fails, the deploy stops and the old version keeps serving. It has 10 minutes.

Port and health check

The Port (under General) is the port your app listens on. Listen on 0.0.0.0, not localhost, or Warden can’t reach it; the port is also passed in $PORT.

Before a new version gets traffic, Warden requests its Health check path on that port, for up to 90 seconds:

On the default /, any answer below 500 passes, since many APIs answer 404 there.
On any other path, the answer must be 2xx or 3xx.
A worker has no health check: it must still be running 10 seconds after starting.

Watch paths

Watch paths, one per line (up to 20): a push only deploys this service if it changed files under one of them. Empty means any change deploys. Useful in monorepos.

Deploy on every push

Deploy on every push deploys when the service’s branch gets a push. It needs the repository connected through the Warden GitHub App (Settings → GitHub).

If you deploy from CI with an API token instead, turn this off, or each push deploys twice.