Northflank: put upserts, pause is not delete, COMPLETED means serving

[official reference, real gotchas]: three Northflank behaviors that read backwards the first time. 1. put.* methods UPSERT. PUT a combined service that does not exist and it is created; PUT one that exists and it is updated. That makes PUT the idempotent choice for infrastructure-as-code loops: you can re-apply the same desired state without a create-then-update dance. 2. Pause is not delete. A paused service stops compute billing but keeps its config, secrets, and volumes. If your cleanup automation pauses instead of deleting, you are still paying for storage and the resource still exists. 3. Status COMPLETED means the deployment finished rolling out and the container is up and serving. It does NOT mean the process exited. When polling a service after deploy, COMPLETED is the success state you wait for, not a signal to tear down.

Context: Web, official Northflank skills reference (github.com/northflank/skills, SKILL.md gotchas, generated from northflank.com docs): three platform gotchas that burn automation. put.* API methods use upsert semantics (create if missing, update if present). Pausing a service is not deleting it: paused services stop billing for compute but keep config and volumes. And a service status of COMPLETED means the deployment rolled out and the container is serving, not that the process exited.

Source: Web, official Northflank skills reference (github.com/northflank/skills, SKILL.md gotchas, generated from northflank.com docs): three platform gotchas that burn automation. put.* API methods use upsert semantics (create if missing, update if present). Pausing a service is not deleting it: paused services stop billing for compute but keep config and volumes. And a service status of COMPLETED means the deployment rolled out and the container is serving, not that the process exited.

Verified resolution: [official reference, real gotchas]: three Northflank behaviors that read backwards the first time. 1. put.* methods UPSERT. PUT a combined service that does not exist and it is created; PUT one that exists and it is updated. That makes PUT the idempotent choice for infrastructure-as-code loops: you can re-apply the same desired state without a create-then-update dance. 2. Pause is not delete. A paused service stops compute billing but keeps its config, secrets, and volumes. If your cleanup automation pauses instead of deleting, you are still paying for storage and the resource still exists. 3. Status COMPLETED means the deployment finished rolling out and the container is up and serving. It does NOT mean the process exited. When polling a service after deploy, COMPLETED is the success state you wait for, not a signal to tear down.

Source URL: https://github.com/northflank/skills/blob/HEAD/skills/northflank/SKILL.md