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What is Drift?
The tour, if you are new here.
Why Drift?
Two reasons, and they are independent.
The case for a small cloud
What disappears, and what it costs you.
Made in Europe
Built, hosted and owned in the EU.
Use cases
Whether Drift does your thing.
Getting started
Nothing to deployed, in one command.
Architecture
How a slice is put together.
What it costs
The free grant, four unit prices, two rules.
Build
Atomic
Serverless functions.
Write a function
The handler shape, and what you pay for.
Six languages
Go, Python, Node, Ruby, PHP, Rust.
Runtime versions
Which interpreter version your function runs on.
Authentication
The auth= gate, and per-route API keys.
Request headers
What reaches your handler, and what does not.
Triggers
Queue-triggered and scheduled functions.
Streaming
SSE and WebSocket from one function.
Outbound egress
What a slice may dial.
Memory and concurrency
What a booking buys, and what happens at the edge of it.
Limits and alerts
Timeout, memory and rate, and being told.
Elements
One language, one manifest, many functions.
The CLI surface
Every drift atomic command.
Backbone
Secrets, data, blobs, queues.
NoSQL
JSON collections, upserted on _id.
SQL
Per-slice SQLite, with transactions.
Blobs
Files and uploads, organised by bucket.
Secrets
Encrypted config a function declares.
Queues
FIFO messages that trigger functions.
Cache
Key/value strings with a TTL.
Locks
Stop two workers doing one job.
Realtime
In-slice pub/sub over WebSocket.
Canvas
Static sites, same origin as your API.
Deed
Identity, devices and wallets.
KeyAuth
Passwordless login with device keys.
JWT
Sign and verify with the slice's own key.
Vault
Ciphertext the slice cannot read.
Link
Enroll a second device by attestation.
Pocket
E2EE app data that follows an identity.
Tools
CLI
One binary, every noun.
Reference
The binary, and every noun.
account
Sign up, log in, delete.
slice
Create, resize, snapshot, domains.
file
Lint it, apply it, run it.
atomic
One function at a time.
backbone
Reach into the data plane.
deed
One read-only status command.
canvas
Deploy a static site.
migrate
Move off another cloud.
doctor
Explain a failure code, offline.
Dashboard
What bare drift opens.
SDK
Six languages, zero dependencies.
Writing a handler
Arguments, request, return.
API reference
Both namespaces, every call.
NoSQL
Documents, by _id or storage key.
SQL
Queries and transactions.
Cache
Strings with a TTL.
Secrets
Read what the function declared.
Blobs
Bytes, addressed bucket/key.
Queues
Push, and pull if you must.
Locks
A token you hand back.
Realtime
Publish, and count who heard.
Deed
KeyAuth, JWT, Vault, Link, Pocket.
Utilities
Logs, egress, cross-slice calls.
Languages
The same handler, six ways.
Driftfile
One file that describes your app.
Anatomy
Every top-level key, and the name rules.
A worked example
One app with every section written out.
Atomic
Function limits, schedules, alerts, egress.
Backbone
Collections, databases, buckets, secrets.
Canvas
Sites, and the route each mounts on.
Domains
Custom hostnames the slice answers on.
Environments
One project, several slices, one file.
Deploying
Lint it, hook a build on, read its errors.
Operate
Auth
Route gates, API keys and your account.
Security
Boundaries, sandboxing and hardening.
Troubleshooting
Error codes
What went wrong, and what to do about it.
Legal
Acceptable use
What a slice may not be used for.
Data processing
The DPA, and every sub-processor.

Request headers

Your function receives the headers the caller sent. That includes your own: webhook signatures like Stripe-Signature or X-Hub-Signature-256, an Idempotency-Key, a traceparent, whatever your application defines. So you can verify a webhook is authentic before acting on it.

Six headers are removed on the way in, and it is worth knowing why:

Header Why it does not reach your function
Cookie / Set-CookieEvery slice shares the ondrift.eu apex, so a cookie scoped to it would be sent to every other slice too. Carry sessions in the Authorization header instead.
X-Forwarded-For / -Host / -Proto, X-Real-IPStripped so a caller cannot forge one. Nothing replaces them on the way to your function today, so there is no header your handler can read the caller's address from.

Four headers are written by the platform on every request, overwriting anything the caller sent:

Header Value
X-UsernameThe slice's owner.
X-SliceThe slice name this request was routed to.
X-User-RPMThe slice's requests-per-minute ceiling.
X-User-RuntimeThe per-invocation runtime budget in seconds. The runner reads it to size the kill timer.

X-Request-Id is a correlation id, not an identity.

Nothing on the platform generates or checks one: your function receives exactly what the caller sent, or no header at all if they sent none. Any client can choose its own value or omit it entirely. Log it to correlate a request across layers when your caller supplies one; never authorise on it.