Current limitations

Automaton is early. These are the specific things to know before you rely on it.

Platform

One kind of server. x86_64 Ubuntu 24.04 or later. ARM, other distributions and fully offline or private-only installs are not the supported setup.
Public DNS and HTTPS. The server needs api, studio, store, apps and *.apps records and public ports 80, 443 and 5671.
A Runner is the agent you install on a server to run apps. With one Runner, automaton deploy uses it automatically; with several you pick one per app. There is no automatic balancing.
No high availability. The API, database and each Runner run on single machines. A machine that goes down takes its apps with it until you restore it.
No autoscaling or cross-region failover. Each app runs where it is assigned.
No WebSockets or streamed responses. Requests and responses are complete; apps poll for live updates.
Routing at large scale is unvalidated. The proxy configuration holds per-app rules and is regenerated on change; behavior with thousands of apps has not been measured (see the self-hosted core notes).

Updates cause brief interruptions. An update replaces the API, Worker, Studio and the app store; they can be unavailable for a short time.
Updates are not fully automatic. Infrastructure changes and Runner-machine upgrades are separate steps you run.
Backups stay on the same server. Nightly backups of the database and keys (not your apps' data files) are kept for 7 days on the server. Off-server copies and your hosting provider's snapshots are yours to arrange; a built-in off-site backup is planned (#486).
Restoring on a different, clean server is unverified. The restore command exists and the steps are documented, but a restore onto a freshly installed second server has not been proven yet (#524).

Built for people you trust. Public multi-tenant hosting is out of scope. Isolation between users of one server is being formally accepted (#521); until then do not host untrusted users.
No self sign-up. Users are added by an administrator.
The Runner is trusted. The Runner controls the machine's Docker, so treat Runner machines as part of your trusted base. A security overview is planned (#562).

The CLI needs the .NET 10 SDK or later to install from NuGet. The server installer does not need .NET.

We update this page as these are fixed. See the roadmap for what is planned.