Core Concepts

System services vs. project containers

dde manages two layers of Docker containers:

System services are long-running, shared infrastructure containers managed by system:install. They run independently of any project and are shared across all projects on the machine:

• Traefik — Reverse proxy on ports 80 and 443. Routes traffic to project containers based on labels.
• dnsmasq — DNS server that resolves *.test domains to 127.0.0.1. Forwards other queries to upstream DNS (default: 9.9.9.9, 149.112.112.112).
• SSH agent — Holds SSH keys and makes them available to project containers via a shared volume.

Project containers are defined in your project’s docker-compose.yml and started/stopped by project:up and project:down. These include your application container(s) and any per-project services (databases, caches, mail).

The supported per-project services are:

Service	Default version	Default port
MariaDB	11.8	3306
PostgreSQL	18.3	5432
Valkey	9	6379
Mailpit	latest	8025

Configuration hierarchy

dde resolves configuration values using a layered override chain. Values from higher layers take precedence:

CLI options (highest priority)
    |
Project config (.dde/config.yml)
    |
Global config (~/.dde/config.yml)
    |
Built-in defaults (lowest priority)

For example, the MariaDB version resolves as follows:

1. If .dde/config.yml specifies an explicit version for the mariadb service, that version is used.
2. Otherwise, if ~/.dde/config.yml defines a global service version override, that version is used.
3. Otherwise, the built-in default (11.8) is used.

Global config

Located at ~/.dde/config.yml. Controls machine-wide defaults:

output: text                        # Default output format (text or json)
dns:
  forward:
    - 9.9.9.9
    - 149.112.112.112
ssh:
  keys: []                          # SSH key paths to add to the agent
services:
  mariadb:
    version: "11.8"
  postgres:
    version: "18.3"

Project config

Located at .dde/config.yml inside the project root. Controls per-project settings:

name: my-app
services:
  - name: mariadb
    version: "11.8"
  - name: valkey
containers:
  web:
    shell: /bin/bash

The .dde/ directory

project:init creates a .dde/ directory in your project root with the following structure:

.dde/
  .gitignore            # Excludes data/ and snapshots/ from version control
  config.yml            # Project configuration
  data/                 # Persistent data for services (database files, etc.)
  snapshots/            # Database snapshots
  hooks/                # Lifecycle hook scripts
    project.up.pre/     # Runs before project:up
    project.up.post/    # Runs after project:up
    project.down.pre/   # Runs before project:down
    project.down.post/  # Runs after project:down
  adapters/             # Custom adapter scripts
  plugins/              # Project-local plugin definitions

The .gitignore file excludes data/ and snapshots/ so that database files and snapshots are not committed to version control. Everything else — including config.yml, hooks, adapters, and plugins — is intended to be committed and shared with the team.

Networking

dde uses two Docker networks:

• dde — a single, machine-wide network created by system:install. Traefik lives here, and global services that need cross-project DNS (e.g. Mailpit’s mail alias) are attached to it.
• dde-services-<project> (main checkout) or dde-services-<project>-<suffix> (worktree) — a per-worktree network. Project containers and the versioned service containers picked in .dde/config.yml (e.g. mariadb, postgres, valkey, mailpit) are connected here under their canonical service names, so your application reaches them as mariadb, postgres, etc. — the same hostnames a classic single-project compose file would use. Each worktree owns its own network; project:down removes only the calling worktree’s network, leaving main and sibling worktrees unaffected. The per-worktree network design also lets a branch run a different service version than main without canonical-alias collisions.

Project containers do not join the shared dde network when a per-project network exists: two checkouts of the same project (main + worktree) would otherwise register identical service-name aliases on dde and Docker DNS would round-robin between them. To keep inbound HTTP routing working, Traefik is attached to the per-project network on project:up and detached on project:down.

Neither network is declared in your committed docker-compose.yml. The shared dde network is created once by system:install and lives for the lifetime of the machine; the per-project network is injected into the compose overlay that project:up generates and removed on project:down. The per-project network is created unconditionally on every project:up, even for projects that declare no services: in .dde/config.yml — there is no fallback to the shared dde network for project containers.

This split is what lets multiple projects use the same versioned service container (one mariadb:11.8 serves all projects that asked for it) while keeping the service hostnames stable inside each project: my-app and other-app both talk to mariadb, but each sees only its own per-project network.

Output formats

Every dde command supports the --output option to control the output format:

• text (default) — Human-readable terminal output
• json — Machine-readable JSON, suitable for scripting and CI pipelines

dde project:describe --output=json

The default output format can be set globally in ~/.dde/config.yml via the output key.