# Cloud Deployment (/docs/developer-guide/cloud-deployment) `DEPLOYMENT_MODE=cloud` runs the managed, multi-tenant SaaS offering: self-serve signup, one umbrella organization per customer holding all their brands, Stripe subscription billing, and plan-enforced limits. Local, demo, and whitelabel deployments are unaffected by everything on this page — outside cloud mode, entitlements resolve to unlimited and none of the billing code paths execute. ## Required environment [#required-environment] On top of the shared variables (`DATABASE_URL`, `BETTER_AUTH_SECRET`, `SCRAPE_TARGETS`, `DEPLOYMENT_MODE`), cloud requires: | Variable | Purpose | | ------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------- | | `APP_URL` | Public base URL (auth, email links, Stripe redirects) | | `STRIPE_SECRET_KEY` | Stripe API key (`sk_live_...` / `sk_test_...`) | | `STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET` | Signing secret for the billing webhook | | `RESEND_API_KEY`, `RESEND_FROM_EMAIL` | Transactional email | | `GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID`, `GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET` | Google sign-in | | `CLOUD_SIGNUP_ALLOWLIST` | Signup gate — empty denies everyone, `*` opens signup | ## Stripe setup [#stripe-setup] The plan catalog lives in `packages/config/src/plans.ts` — prices, limits, sampling rates, and the premium pool per plan. The application references Stripe prices by **lookup key**, never by price id, so one bootstrap command provisions any Stripe account (test or live) to match the catalog: ```bash STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_test_... pnpm -C packages/cloud exec tsx scripts/bootstrap-stripe.ts ``` Re-run it after editing the catalog; it only creates what's missing (Stripe prices are immutable, so amount changes create a new price and move the lookup key). Then configure a webhook endpoint in the Stripe dashboard: * URL: `/api/auth/stripe/webhook` * Events: `checkout.session.completed`, `customer.subscription.created`, `customer.subscription.updated`, `customer.subscription.deleted` The webhook-maintained `subscription` table is the single source of truth for billing state; both the web app and the worker read it on every decision, so plan changes, payment failures, and cancellations apply without restarts. A payment failure keeps tracking alive for a 7-day grace window, then pauses tracking (data stays readable) until Stripe recovers the payment. The webhook also emails the org's admins on payment failure, recovery, and subscription end. These notices go through the same `RESEND_API_KEY` / `RESEND_FROM_EMAIL` configuration as the auth emails — no additional setup. Enable Stripe Tax and Smart Retries in the Stripe dashboard. Before launch, walk the full lifecycle against a test-clock customer with `packages/cloud/scripts/verify-stripe-lifecycle.ts` (see its header for usage). ### Coupons [#coupons] Checkout offers an "Add promotion code" field, so a launch or partner code needs no code change — create the coupon and its promotion code in the Stripe dashboard (Product catalog → Coupons) and hand out the code. Restrict it there to the plans, durations, or first-time customers it should apply to; the app never sees the code and does not validate it. Two limits worth knowing: * Only **first** checkout takes a code. A customer already on a plan switches through Stripe's subscription API, which has no promotion-code step, so discounting an existing subscriber means applying the coupon to their subscription in the dashboard. * To let customers redeem codes themselves later, turn on promotion codes in the Customer Portal settings too — it is a separate dashboard toggle from the one on Checkout. To verify, create a test-mode promotion code and subscribe once through the app. ## SCRAPE\_TARGETS for cloud [#scrape_targets-for-cloud] The instance-level `SCRAPE_TARGETS` defines the menu customers pick from. Configure **one target per standard platform** (the run policy uses the first match per model), plus a grounded target for each model sold in the premium tier: ``` chatgpt:brightdata:online,google-ai-mode:brightdata:online,google-ai-overview:brightdata:online,copilot:brightdata:online,perplexity:brightdata:online,gemini:brightdata:online,qwen:openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b,deepseek:openrouter:deepseek/deepseek-v3.2,mistral:openrouter:mistralai/mistral-medium-3.1,claude:anthropic-api:claude-sonnet-5,chatgpt:openai-api:gpt-5-mini:online,grok:openrouter:x-ai/grok-4.5:online,claude:anthropic-api:claude-sonnet-5:online ``` Platforms are offered to customers only when they appear in both the plan menu (`STANDARD_PLATFORM_MENU`) and `SCRAPE_TARGETS`. Some models are configured twice on purpose, and the two entries are sold differently: * **Ungrounded** (`claude:anthropic-api:...`) is an ordinary platform pick on every standard plan. A pick always resolves the ungrounded target, never the grounded one, so a brand cannot spend the premium pool by choosing a platform. * **Grounded** (`...:online` on an API provider) is the premium tier, counted against the org's pool of prompt/model pairings (`prompts.premium_models`) — plan included plus purchased add-on. A grounded call is roughly ten times an ungrounded one, which is why it is metered per pairing rather than per brand. Customers assign it in the prompts editor; the LLM settings page reports the totals. The two tiers are independent, not two rungs of one ladder. A brand's picks run on **every** one of its prompts; a premium model is chosen on **individual** prompts and runs in addition to them. One prompt might carry Claude and Grok while the next carries only Grok and a third carries none, and all three still run the brand's four picks. A premium model need not be picked, and picking a model does not discount its premium slot — `resolvePromptRunPlan` builds the two sets from different inputs (`brand.enabledModels` and `prompt.premiumModels`) and simply concatenates them. Which models are sellable that way is a `premium` flag in `CLOUD_PLATFORMS`, not a model id threaded through the code: today Claude, Grok and ChatGPT (GPT-5 Search). Adding another means adding the flag and a grounded target — nothing in the schema, the guards or the run policy names a model. "Grounded" means **a direct API call with the model's own web search on**, which is what `isGroundedApiTarget` decides. Web search alone doesn't say it: every scraped target is `:online` too, because a consumer surface always searches. It is the combination that costs. Every pick samples at the plan's rate, whether it is scraped or an API call — a model is not premium, a grounded call is. Only the grounded targets depart, at `PREMIUM_RUNS_PER_DAY`, which a custom plan can raise through the `premiumRunsPerDay` override. Qwen, DeepSeek and Mistral carry no `:online` variant at all: they have no native search tool, so OpenRouter would fall back to Exa, whose results are not a surface a consumer would ever see. They report mentions but no citations, since a run with no web search returns no source annotations — as does any ungrounded pick. Grok is sold **only** as a premium target, grounded — it is the one model on this list with no ungrounded entry in the cloud menu. Its own answers run about **$0.004 per call** against a plan design point near **$0.004 per run**, because OpenRouter prices Grok's output at several times a scrape and Elmo pays for output tokens, not queries. One of four picks devoted to it, sampled four times a day, would cost more than the scraped surface it displaced. Metered once daily out of the paid pool, it prices the same way grounded Claude does. The customer-facing version of this distinction is how the LLM settings page is laid out: three cards — **Scraped Engines**, **LLM APIs** and **Premium** — each explaining in its own description what that group tells you about a brand, with the pick budget and one save bar shared across them. Providers declare which they are; DataForSEO declares both and picks per target, since pinning a model version routes to LLM Responses instead of the scraper. The third card behaves differently per mode. In cloud it reports the premium pool rather than offering checkboxes, because grounded calls are metered per prompt/model pair. Self-hosted has no pool, so a grounded target there is an ordinary pick. Those tooltips also carry a per-run cost estimate and a monthly projection for the brand — but only in `local` mode, where the operator pays the providers. Cloud and whitelabel omit it: the person looking pays a plan price rather than the bills, and the per-provider numbers behind it are internal attribution estimates (`packages/lib/src/usage/cost.ts`), not quotes. Local mode also lists the platforms this instance has **not** configured, with the providers that can serve each and a link into that provider's section of the setup guide. The suggestions come from `providersByModel()`, derived from `STATUS_TARGETS`, so every one is a combination the scheduled provider workflow exercises. A test asserts the reverse too: every model in `KNOWN_MODELS` has a status target, so a platform can't ship on the menu without something watching whether it still works. ## How plan limits are enforced [#how-plan-limits-are-enforced] Three layers, all resolving through `getOrgEntitlements(orgId)`: . **Write time** — brand count, the org-wide tracked-prompt pool, platform picks, and premium assignments are checked in the web server functions and `/api/v1` before any insert. . **Schedule time** — every `process-prompt` firing re-resolves the org's entitlements and runs only targets that are due at their plan cadence (standard platforms at the plan's samples/day, premium targets once daily), metered against actual `prompt_runs` history. Canceled or paused orgs stop running; `schedule-maintenance` revives tracking within minutes of reactivation. A per-org daily run ceiling derived from plan limits caps runaway spend. . **Downgrades** — nothing is deleted. Resources beyond the new limits simply stop running, oldest-first wins, and the billing page shows the overage. Every provider call is recorded in `usage_events` with the org, brand, prompt, target, and a rough cost estimate (tune the per-provider numbers in `packages/lib/src/usage/cost.ts` against real invoices). ## Custom plans [#custom-plans] Custom plans are configuration, not code. Insert (or update) a row in `organization_settings`: ```sql INSERT INTO organization_settings (organization_id, entitlement_overrides) VALUES ('', '{ "planOverride": "custom", "maxBrands": 10, "maxPrompts": 1000, "platformPicks": 6, "extraPlatforms": ["kimi"], "standardRunsPerDay": 7, "premiumPoolIncluded": 100 }') ON CONFLICT (organization_id) DO UPDATE SET entitlement_overrides = EXCLUDED.entitlement_overrides; ``` Every field is optional and overrides the org's plan (or the Business plan when `planOverride: "custom"` marks an org billed outside self-serve — such an org is fully entitled without any Stripe subscription). The shape is validated by `entitlementOverridesSchema` in `packages/config/src/entitlements.ts`; malformed JSON falls back to plain plan limits, never to unlimited. `extraPlatforms` entries must also exist in `SCRAPE_TARGETS` to actually run. ## Notes for self-hosted upgrades [#notes-for-self-hosted-upgrades] The cloud build-out ships in the same migrations every deployment runs. Plan limits do not: outside cloud, entitlements resolve to unlimited before any query, so every write-time guard and the worker's run policy short-circuit and behavior is unchanged. `subscription`, `organization_settings` and `prompts.premium_models` sit empty or unused. Two deliberate improvements come along for the ride: the LLMs settings page edits `brands.enabledModels` directly, and a prompt re-fired early (e.g. by the self-healing scheduler after a provider outage) re-runs only the targets that are actually stale instead of re-sampling every model. Two things do change for every install. `usage_events` is written in all modes — one row per provider call, success or failure — because it is the per-run attribution and provider failure-rate record, not a billing-only table. It has no retention job, so it grows with run volume. And migration 0014 deletes duplicate `member` rows before adding the unique index it should always have had; whitelabel installs are the ones likely to have any, since the Auth0 sync could race itself. It keeps the most-privileged, then oldest, row per (organization, user) and is verified against a seeded database in CI.