Introduction

st8 is a lightweight, versioned key-value store designed for dynamic configuration — values your application reads at runtime without a redeployment.

The problem

Most applications have two kinds of configuration:

• Build-time config — baked into the binary or image. Changing it requires a redeploy.
• Environment variables — slightly more flexible, but still require a restart and leave no audit trail.

Neither approach is great for values that need to change frequently, safely, and with history: feature flags, A/B test parameters, rate limits, kill switches, algorithm weights, model routing rules.

What st8 provides

Feature	Description
Revisions	Every write creates an immutable, numbered revision. Nothing is ever overwritten.
Rollbacks	Revert any namespace/branch to a previous revision in one operation.
Checkpoints	Tag a revision with a human-readable name (e.g. stable, pre-launch) for fast reference.
Branches	Multiple independent state lines within one namespace. Switch your app between them at request time.
Namespaces	Flat, user-defined partitioning — one namespace per service, environment, tenant, or whatever makes sense.
HTTP API	st8d is a plain HTTP server. Any language can talk to it.
Go client	Typed, context-aware client with built-in retry-friendly design.

Architecture

┌─────────────┐   HTTP    ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐
│   your app  │ ────────▶ │  st8d    │──▶│  disk    │
└─────────────┘           └──────────┘   └──────────┘
      ▲
      │  reads config at request time

st8d is the server. It stores all state on disk using pebble, a fast embedded key-value store.

st8ctl is the CLI. Use it to push config, inspect history, create checkpoints, and roll back.

Your application uses the Go client (or plain HTTP) to fetch the config it needs.

When to use st8

st8 is a good fit when you need:

• Changing config without redeploying
• A clear audit trail of who changed what and when
• Safe rollbacks with a single command
• A/B testing at the config layer, not the code layer
• Per-environment or per-tenant config isolation

st8 is not a secret store, a distributed cache, or a full database. For secrets, use Vault or your cloud provider’s secret manager.