Prerequisites

Get the following in place before running the installer. Most steps take a few minutes; DNS propagation can take longer.

A Cloudflare account

Cirrus runs on Cloudflare Workers and stores blobs in R2. Both require a Cloudflare account.

Sign up at cloudflare.com if needed. The free Workers plan is enough to start. R2 has its own pricing — see Costs and limits.

R2 must be enabled on the account before deploying. Enable it from the R2 section of the Cloudflare dashboard. The first activation walks through accepting the R2 terms.

A domain on Cloudflare

The PDS needs a hostname. Cirrus serves the account from a domain that is active in Cloudflare DNS.

The domain controls two things at once:

• The PDS hostname (for example pds.example.com).
• The account handle (for example alice.example.com) if did:web is used, or any compatible handle if did:plc is used.

Add the domain to Cloudflare:

1. Log into the Cloudflare dashboard.
2. Choose Add a site and enter the domain.
3. Follow the prompts to update the domain’s nameservers at the registrar.
4. Wait for DNS to propagate. This usually takes a few minutes and can take up to 24 hours.

The domain must show as Active in the Cloudflare dashboard before the deploy step.

Node.js and a package manager

Cirrus is distributed as npm packages. The scaffolder runs under Node 20 or later. Any of pnpm, npm, yarn, or bun work; the scaffolder asks which to use.

A Bluesky account, if migrating

Migrating an existing Bluesky account requires:

• The current handle and password.
• Access to the email address registered with Bluesky (for the PLC operation token).

Cirrus also supports creating a new account from scratch. The wizard offers both paths.

What is not required

• A separate database. The repository lives in the Durable Object’s SQLite storage.
• A server, VM, or container runtime.
• Cloudflare Pages, KV, or D1.
• A pre-generated signing key. The wizard generates one. The wizard also prints it once for backup.

Once the Cloudflare account is live and the domain shows as Active, continue to the Quick start.