Build with your agent, ship inside the client's own infrastructure, and leave behind something their team can run — with the audit and SSO their security team already wants. Self-hosted, agent-native, open source. Whether your title is FDE, solutions engineer, implementation engineer, or agency lead, the job is the same: get what you built running in your customer's environment, fast.
Palantir invented the role; today it's one of the fastest-growing jobs in AI — and the work always lands inside the customer's own environment, where AppCrane runs.
Named as examples of where the role is growing — not AppCrane users.
Forward-deployed work doesn't end at a prototype. You embed with the customer, build the thing with your agent, and it has to run in their environment — their VPC, their on-prem box, sometimes an air-gapped network with no outbound at all. That rules out Vercel, Railway, and Render on day one: the customer's code, data, and IP can't sit on a vendor's cloud, and most deploy SaaS phones home.
So the deploy gets hand-rolled — Docker, ingress, secrets, IAM, a deploy script, and a spreadsheet of who-changed-what — then rebuilt from scratch at the next engagement. AppCrane is that layer, done once and portable: one command on a plain Ubuntu box inside the client's perimeter, and you have Docker-isolated apps, auto-HTTPS, zero-downtime deploys, per-user audit, and SSO — driven by the agent you already work in. It sits on top of your stack; it doesn't replace your judgment about their infra.
# one command inside the client's VPC / on-prem box curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gitayg/appCrane/main/install.sh | sudo bash
You already build with agents — MCP servers, sub-agents, skills. But you still deploy by hand: kubectl, Terraform, a pile of scripts. AppCrane closes that gap. It exposes ~35 appcrane_* tools over the Model Context Protocol, so Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex can create an app, deploy to sandbox, and promote to production in plain language — the same workflow at every client. Real branches, real PRs; your CI and reviews still apply. Walkthrough: Deploy from Claude & Cursor.
| AppCrane | Managed cloud (Vercel/Railway) | DIY (Docker+Terraform) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runs on the client's own infra | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Data & IP stay in their perimeter | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Air-gapped / no outbound OK | ✓ | ✗ | ~ |
| Deploy from your AI agent (MCP) | ✓ | ~ | ✗ |
| Zero-downtime deploy + rollback | ✓ | ✓ | ~ |
| Per-user audit for an outside deployer | ✓ | ~ | ✗ |
| Enterprise SSO (SAML/OIDC/SCIM) | ✓ | ~ | ✗ |
| Leave-behind the client's team can run | Dashboard + audit | Vendor account | Bespoke, undocumented |
| Time to first deploy | One command | Minutes | Days |
| Open source / no telemetry | AGPL-3.0 | ✗ | Your stack |
Managed clouds are out the moment the client's data can't leave their perimeter. DIY works but re-solves auth, ingress, audit, and handoff at every engagement. AppCrane is the middle path: the managed-PaaS experience, self-hosted on their box.
Engagements end by transferring ownership — and the failure mode is well documented: you leave, and the client inherits raw Kubernetes and Terraform nobody on their team fully understands. AppCrane is the leave-behind that doesn't rot. It runs on their server with a dashboard, SSO, four-role RBAC, and a per-user audit trail their team already knows how to operate. No vendor account to transfer, no license to renew — it's open source, and it's theirs.
Apps, deploys, health, and logs in a UI the client's team drives after you're gone.
SAML / OIDC / SCIM against the client's existing IdP — users provisioned and deprovisioned automatically.
Platform Owner, App Owner, App Admin, App User — scope who can deploy, read secrets, and promote.
Every deploy, env change, and MCP call is bound to a user and logged — the trail their security review asks for.
Whole-system backup plus off-site S3 — real disaster recovery the client owns.
Deploy from the client's GitHub, or an AppCrane-managed repo when there's no GitHub at all.
FDEs vet tools by reading the source before dropping them into a customer VPC. AppCrane is AGPL-3.0 on GitHub: auditable, self-hostable, with no telemetry and no licensing callbacks — exactly what an air-gapped or regulated environment requires. The source is the trust, and the security review passes because nothing phones home.
FDEs have to ship on the client's own infrastructure, so managed clouds like Vercel or Railway are out. AppCrane installs on any Ubuntu box in the client's VPC or on-prem with one command, giving you Docker isolation, auto-HTTPS, zero-downtime deploys, and per-user audit — driven by your AI agent over MCP.
Yes. AppCrane self-hosts on the client's own Ubuntu server, including a private VPC or an air-gapped environment. Their code, data, and secrets never leave their perimeter, and there's no telemetry or callback.
AppCrane runs on the client's server with their own dashboard, audit trail, SSO, and RBAC. There's no vendor account to transfer and no license to renew — it's open source (AGPL-3.0) and it's theirs.
Yes. AppCrane exposes ~35 appcrane_* tools over MCP, so Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex can create apps, deploy to sandbox, and promote to production in plain language — the same agent workflow at every client.