App

An App is a logical container for Primitives that are updated together through transactional deployments.

Primitives

Primitive	Description
Balancer	Custom TCP load balancers for non-HTTP protocols (e.g., raw TCP, gRPC). Routes external traffic to a Service on specific ports.
Build	A compiled snapshot of your codebase, produced from a Dockerfile. Each deploy creates a new Build.
Object	Blob/file storage for uploading and downloading files from your application.
Process	A running container instance. Processes are created from a Release and managed by a Service or convox run.
Release	A unit of deployment that pairs a Build with a set of environment variables. Promoting a Release deploys it.
Resource	A network-accessible backing service such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, or Memcached. Can be containerized or cloud-managed.
Service	A horizontally-scalable group of durable Processes defined in convox.yml. Services are the primary workload primitive.
Timer	A scheduled task that runs a command on a cron schedule using a Service's image. Maps to a Kubernetes CronJob.

App Definition

An App is defined by a single convox.yml

labels:
  convox.com/test: true
resources:
  database:
    type: postgres
services:
  web:
    build: .
    resources:
      - database

App CLI Commands

Creating an App

    $ convox apps create myapp
    Creating myapp... OK

Getting information about an App

    $ convox apps info myapp
    Name    myapp
    Status  running
    Locked  false
    Release RABCDEFGHI
    Router  router.0a1b2c3d4e5f.convox.cloud

Listing Apps

    $ convox apps
    APP    STATUS   RELEASE
    myapp  running  RABCDEFGHI

Deleting an App

    $ convox apps delete myapp
    Deleting myapp... OK

Getting logs for an App

    $ convox logs -a myapp
    2026-01-15T14:30:00 service/web/web-zyxwv Starting myapp on port 5000

Cancelling a deployment that is in progress

    $ convox apps cancel myapp
    Cancelling deployment of myapp... OK

Preventing accidental deletion of an App

    $ convox apps lock myapp
    Locking myapp... OK

    $ convox apps unlock myapp
    Unlocking myapp... OK

Exporting an App

    $ convox apps export myapp -f /tmp/myapp.tgz
    Exporting app myapp... OK
    Exporting env... OK
    Exporting build BABCDEFGHI... OK
    Exporting resource database... OK
    Packaging export... OK

Importing an App

    $ convox apps import myapp2 -f /tmp/myapp.tgz
    Creating app myapp2... OK
    Importing build... OK, RIHGFEDCBA
    Importing env... OK, RJIHGFEDCB
    Promoting RJIHGFEDCB... OK
    Importing resource database... OK