Camps#

A camp is where you stay, not who you are. Good campsites are worth appreciating — and leaving, when the rent goes up.

The Camp is HoBo’s second foundational primitive: the answer to what kind of home is this? — environment type, requirements, and preferences — not which cloud account or which Bindle owns the slot.

Every running app occupies a camp, but writing one is optional: leave it out and HoBo infers a camp from policy and approved providers. You write one to pin environment semantics yourself, or because placement is locked down to explicit camps.

What a camp is (and is not)#

Provider selection belongs on the Yard. Bindles stay provider-agnostic and are placed by deployment request — not nested inside camp(...).

Authoring#

import { camp } from "hobo/camps";

// Environment shape only — no bindle, no provider.
export const prod = camp("prod", {
  envType: "prod",
  require: ["durable-storage"],
  prefer: ["low-latency"],
  runtimeRequirements: ["runtime-local"],
  labels: { tier: "gold" },
});

export const staging = camp("staging", {
  envType: "staging",
});

Attach camps when you author a yard:

import { yard } from "hobo/yards";
import { prod, staging } from "./camps";

export default yard("aws-east", {
  provider: "aws",
  regions: ["us-east-1"],
  camps: [prod, staging],
});

Then converge with the CLI:

hobo plan --camp prod   # dry run: placement, cost, warnings
hobo up --camp prod     # converge

Day-one path: you often never write a camp file. hobo up / hobo dev against the default local lane infers a local camp and durable SQLite journal with no cloud account. Explicit camps matter when you pin multi-env topology or platform policy requires them.

Rules camps enforce#

• One home at a time. Mixing providers in one camp is invalid — that’s what Yards (one provider) and Junctions (many providers) are for.
• Runtime is a requirement, not a vendor SDK. Camps declare substrate needs (runtimeRequirements); engines that satisfy them plug in behind Camp ports (EventStore, Queue, ActorHost, Clock). The local runtime ships today; alternate engines (Postgres-backed, Temporal, Restate, …) are on the roadmap.
• Environment comes from the name. prod, staging, preview/pr-*, and dev get sensible envType inference; override when your naming is more creative.
• Rejected at parse: bindle, defaultProvider, tiers, and bindings on camp(...) — those belonged to an older model. Prefer Yard provider + Bindle deploy.

Writing a camp is optional#

• Inferred camps (the default). With no camp declared, the Dispatcher infers one from configured code and approved providers, optimizing for price under policy.
• Locked-down placement. A junction broker admin can require explicit, approved camps.
• Local camp. hobo dev runs your bindle against the local runtime — offline on your laptop, with honest fidelity labels where local behavior differs from cloud.

Camps and continuous migration#

The camp is your app’s current address, not its identity. Because the bindle is provider-agnostic and every camp exposes the same runtime contract, the Dispatcher can propose a cheaper camp at any time — and the move is the same plan → gate → converge loop as hobo up.

Where camps go next#

• Provider scope and multi-region: Yards.
• Multi-cloud federation: Junctions.
• Bindle authoring: Bindles.
• Trail map: Status.