Source alpha
Early users can use this guide to run a bounded Orbit trial and report useful feedback. The trial starts with a source installation and ends with one development Instance that serves a private HTTPS page. Use disposable machines and data that you can replace.Trial path
Follow the guides in this order. Record the source commit on each machine.
A documentation build or an automated test does not prove that this path works on a fresh machine. Only a run on fresh machines proves it.
Run
bin/bootstrap only in a source checkout. In a Gateway release it refuses, because a release is immutable; deploy another commit instead. Bootstrap seeds its test and quality caches from the main caches when they exist. It never publishes caches; only main CI does. Bootstrap writes the development Gateway key to ORBIT_HOME/gateway.app-key with bin/gateway-app-key, and keeps a key that exists. A nonempty APP_KEY in the environment takes precedence. --with-bun and --with-rust also install the locked dependencies of the Bun and Rust projects.
Limits
The trial has a small environment and workload on purpose.
A private Route change can need coordinated runtime and DNS work. Read the refusal rules in Routes before you change hostnames, membership, or routing. An active Instance means that Orbit finished provisioning. It does not mean that the application is healthy.
Release criteria
The maintainer decides from observed results whether to publish a source alpha tag. The release notes name the exact commit, the supported environment, the known limits, and the results of these checks.
These criteria are a checklist, not a release approval. A version string in a development checkout does not mean that a release exists.
Feedback
Use GitHub issues for bugs and questions. Include the source commit fromgit rev-parse HEAD, the CLI output of orbit --version, the Gateway version from orbit gateway:status, and the operating systems. Describe the command, the expected result, the observed result, and the steps to reproduce it.
Include stable error codes and request IDs when you have them. Check the output before you share it. Remove tokens, private keys, passwords, environment values, repository URLs that carry credentials, and personal data. Never attach the Gateway database or a state backup. The contributor guide explains the local checks.