Production overview

Dependencies

The core install is what every Feather app uses: Flask, Flask-SQLAlchemy, Flask-Migrate, Flask-Login, Flask-WTF, Werkzeug, SQLAlchemy, Alembic, Authlib, Requests, Jinja2 and urllib3. Everything else is an extra, so an app that renders no PDFs does not install a PDF renderer.

Extra	Brings	Enable it when
`postgres`	psycopg2-binary	`DATABASE_URL` is a `postgresql://` URL
`redis`	redis, rq	`CACHE_BACKEND=redis` or `JOB_BACKEND=rq`
`email`	resend	Sending transactional email
`gcs`	google-cloud-storage	`STORAGE_BACKEND=gcs`
`pdf`	WeasyPrint	Generating PDFs
`ratelimit`	flask-limiter	Rate limiting that works across workers (auth apps)
`prod`	gunicorn	Running `feather start` or the Docker web process
`test`	pytest, pytest-cov	Running the app’s own tests
`all`	all of the above	Reproducing the pre-0.9.8 install

pip install "feather-framework[postgres,redis,prod,test]"

feather new writes a requirements.txt naming the extras your answers enabled, so this is usually handled for you. feather --version and feather security-check report which extras are installed.

Importing a feature whose extra is missing raises an error naming the exact install command, rather than an import traceback.

Frontend libraries

Bundled via npm, no CDN: HTMX, Idiomorph, Apache ECharts. Loaded from Google: Google Fonts and Material Icons.

DEBUG mode behaviour

Understanding this is crucial for production.

Setting	Asset loading	Description
`DEBUG=True`	Vite dev server (`localhost:5173`)	Hot reload, no build needed
`DEBUG=False`	Built assets from `static/dist/`	Requires `feather build` first

Unstyled pages in production happen when DEBUG=False but feather build was never run, or when static/dist/ is missing or outdated. Always run feather build before deploying.

Configuration shorthand

FLASK_CONFIG accepts shorthand names. These are equivalent:

FLASK_CONFIG=production
FLASK_CONFIG=ProductionConfig
FLASK_CONFIG=prod

Supported: development/dev, production/prod, testing/test.

Deploy with Docker

Eight files, one machine, Caddy in front.

Full configuration reference

Every key Feather reads, with its default.

Get started

Building the UI

Backend

Features

Tooling

Testing

Deployment

Production overview

Dependencies

Frontend libraries

DEBUG mode behaviour

Configuration shorthand

Deploy with Docker

Full configuration reference

​Dependencies

​Frontend libraries

​DEBUG mode behaviour

​Configuration shorthand

Deploy with Docker

Full configuration reference

Dependencies

Frontend libraries

DEBUG mode behaviour

Configuration shorthand