View Modes & Hierarchy

ACT is designed to be accessible to everyone, from developers who just want to “push and run” to infrastructure engineers who need full control over complex multi-environment setups. To achieve this, ACT implements a bifurcated user experience known as Iceberg Architecture.

The Resource Hierarchy

Under the hood, ACT follows a strict hierarchical structure for organizing resources:

Organization: The top-level container (usually your company or personal account).
Project: A logical grouping of related applications (e.g., “Customer Dashboard”, “Internal Tools”).
Environment: A deployment target within a project (e.g., “Production”, “Staging”, “QA”).
Resource (Service/Database): The actual application or database running on a server.

       [ Organization ]
              │
          [ Project ]
           /      \
    [ Env: Prod ] [ Env: Stage ]
         │             │
    [ Service A ] [ Service B ]

Simple Mode (Default)

Simple Mode is designed for the “No-PhD” workflow. it abstracts away the complexity of Projects and Environments, allowing you to focus purely on your Servers and Services.

Automatic Organization: When you first set up ACT, it automatically creates a “Default Project” and a “Production” environment.
Hidden Layers: In the UI, you won’t see menus for Projects or Environments. When you create a Service, it is automatically assigned to the “Default Project” and “Production” environment.
Auto-Linking: New servers are automatically linked to the “Production” environment so they are immediately available for deployment.

Best for: Solo developers, small projects, and fast prototyping.

Advanced Mode

Advanced Mode (toggled in the sidebar) reveals the full power of ACT’s resource management. It is designed for managing complex infrastructures with multiple environments across different geographic regions or stages of development.

Full Control: Create multiple Projects and move Services between them.
Environment Management: Define custom Environments (e.g., us-east-1-staging) with their own environment variables and placement constraints.
Manual Server Linking: Servers must be explicitly linked to the Environments they serve. A single server can be linked to multiple environments (e.g., one server hosting both Staging and QA).
Environment Inheritance: Services inherit environment variables and security policies from their parent Environment and Project.

Best for: Enterprise teams, multi-stage deployment pipelines, and complex infrastructure.

Switching Between Modes

You can toggle between Simple and Advanced modes at any time using the switch at the bottom of the sidebar.

[!TIP] Data Consistency: Switching modes only changes how data is displayed. It does not delete or modify your underlying resources. A service created in Simple Mode will simply appear inside the “Default Project > Production” environment when you switch to Advanced Mode.