Use Case · Product

Mobile backend on the Software Lifecycle Cloud

A mobile backend on KERNSTACK is a thin, declared API in front of the data the app actually needs: device sessions as table rows, feed and content items keyed for the queries the screens make, media served from buckets with presigned URLs, and push-triggering events recorded beside the rest — all behind gateway routes sized for the app, not for a generic platform’s idea of an app.

Functions (WASM)Edge GatewayNoSQL TablesObject Buckets
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The engineering bottleneck with assembled stacks

Mobile teams inherit backends shaped by somebody else’s product: a general-purpose BaaS whose data model fights the feed, or a monolith API that returns desktop-shaped payloads over mobile networks. The app team’s real requirements are small and specific — session handling, a few keyed reads, uploads that do not melt on hotel wifi — and both extremes serve them badly.

Architecture on the Software Lifecycle Cloud

The BFF is a set of gateway routes to Go functions (or a nodejs worker for TypeScript teams), each returning exactly the shape one screen needs. Sessions are rows keyed by device with expiry the handler enforces. Media uploads go straight to buckets on presigned URLs, and the resulting keys join the feed items that reference them, so the API never proxies bytes.

Payload discipline is the performance feature

A screen that needs nine fields should not download ninety. Because each route exists for a screen, payload shaping happens at declaration time in code review, not in a client-side diet after the API ossified. Feed pagination keys on the sort key the table already has, so “load more” is a keyed read with a cursor, not an offset scan that degrades as users succeed.

  • Uploads bypass the API on presigned URLs — resumable, cheap, and indifferent to file size
  • Sessions expire as data (a timestamp on the row), not as server stickiness
  • New app versions can add routes without versioning theatre; old routes stay until old builds drain

What the app still owns

Offline sync, conflict resolution, and push delivery are app-and-platform concerns this backend supports but does not pretend to solve: it stores the state sync reconciles against and records the events push systems consume. Stating that boundary keeps the BFF thin, which is the entire point of having one.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

The function issues a presigned bucket URL and the app uploads directly; afterwards it registers the object key against the user’s records. Bytes take the short path, bookkeeping takes the declared one.

Yes. Routes are declarations: add the v2 shape beside v1, watch both in the same project, retire v1 when the old build’s traffic reaches zero. There is no single global API version to negotiate.

The backend records the events that should notify — messages, mentions, completions — in tables your existing push path consumes. KERNSTACK does not claim to be your push provider; it keeps the trigger data beside the product data that caused it.

Connected in the Project Graph

Related capabilities, architectures, and comparisons

Category PillarThe Software Lifecycle CloudWhy people and agents build, deploy, and operate on a single vertically integrated stack.Service · ComputeFunctionsGo WebAssembly HTTP handlersService · EdgeGatewayHTTP, WebSocket, and prefix routesService · DataTablesServerless key-value and document tablesService · DataBucketsObject storage with presigned uploadIndustry SolutionHealthTech Cloud SolutionsHealthTech products on KERNSTACK hold care-adjacent data — patient documents, encounter records, consent forms — in one declared project in a European zone on named infrastructure. The needs that dominate are unglamorous and absolute: know exactly where every document lives, who touched it, how consent was captured, and how a record can be frozen the day a legal hold arrives.Use Case · ProductExperiment assignmentAssignment is a pure function of the subject key and the experiment’s salt — stable across requests, no coordination needed. The function records the assignment row once and serves the variant; outcome handlers were already writing events, which now simply carry the experiment id the assignment returned. Analysis reads assignments and outcomes from neighbouring tables with the same keys.Use Case · AgenciesAgency client deliveryThe studio’s delivery shape is a template stack.json: gateway, functions or workers in the client’s stack languages, tables, buckets, and apps under one target per client, on European infrastructure the studio can name in the pitch. Previews run the same declaration; the client’s approval happens in the bound conversation with a live link. Every client’s meter is separate by construction — the studio sees delivery cost per client without allocation spreadsheets.

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