Deployment Concepts

This page explains the main deployment trade-offs and how they relate to Idun’s architecture.

Time to read: ~5 minutes.

Standalone vs managed mode

• Standalone Engine: fastest for local dev and simple deployments; config comes from a local YAML file.
• Managed mode: Engines pull signed configuration from the Agent Manager; enables centralized governance (SSO/RBAC, tenancy, approved observability/guardrails/MCP).

Environment topologies

• Local: Docker Compose for quick iteration.
• Self-hosted: run Manager/UI/Engines in your own cloud/on-prem for data sovereignty.
• Hybrid: Engines close to data; Manager/UI centralized.

Next steps

• Deployment overview
• Local deployment
• Architecture overview