Waypoint was HashiCorp’s attempt at a unified build, deploy, and release tool. A single waypoint.hcl described an application and its three phases: build (using Cloud Native Buildpacks, a Dockerfile, or a language-specific builder), deploy (to Kubernetes, Nomad, ECS, Lambda, Cloud Run, or a static host), and release (flipping traffic over via an ingress, load balancer, or service mesh). Plugins supplied the concrete implementations for each target.
The idea was to give developers a waypoint up command that produced a URL, regardless of the underlying platform, while operators retained control over the plugins and policies. A Waypoint server held project state, history, and auth, and the CLI and a web UI talked to it.
HashiCorp sunset Waypoint Community Edition in 2024, and the GitHub repository was archived on January 8, 2024. HashiCorp now steers users toward HCP Waypoint, so the open-source codebase is mainly useful as a reference for existing installations.
