Summary
The minimum deployment is a bucket, a catalog and the library in the user's app, plus scheduled maintenance; no always-on Timelake server. Cost comes down through fewer, bigger files, rollups and tiered retention.
Design
- Minimum deployment: One bucket, one Iceberg catalog, and the Timelake library inside the user's app or one ingest container, plus a scheduled
timelake-maintain. There is no always-on Timelake server. - Catalog options:
timelake-catalog(recommended), in one of three forms:- In-process library (single node / edge)
- Scale-to-zero function (Lambda / Cloud Run)
- Container Object-storage backend by default; Postgres optional.
- Bring your own: S3 Tables, Glue, Lakekeeper, Polaris, Nessie, Unity, with the reduced capabilities listed in spec 32.
- Cost levers: Fewer, bigger files (lower GET/PUT costs); rollups instead of raw scans; tiered retention; optional cold storage classes for old partitions.
Open questions and issues
- #82 Spike: push new table versions and recent rows to subscribed readers
- #87 Spike: serve readers in several regions from one bucket
- #89 Research: tiered reads, pushed freshness and many regions: tracking issue
- #93 Docs: cost on each cloud, measured where we can
History
- 2026-10-11: specified (SPEC.md §15)
- 2026-10-19: moved from SPEC.md into its own spec.
- 2026-10-19: was spec 28; a background page since the specs were regrouped one per feature.