# Levyer

> Defining the new era of portable, secure software

Levyer is an application platform where security, portability, and compliance are built into the architecture — impossible to bypass, overlook, or lose. It gives leadership, operations, and engineering teams a single foundation to govern how software is built, where it runs, who controls it, and what it costs.

Levyer is currently pre-launch and onboarding its first design partners.

## What Levyer is

Levyer is not an orchestrator, a CI/CD tool, or a cloud wrapper. It is an application layer that sits above your infrastructure. Kubernetes, bare metal, Docker hosts, and cloud-managed runtimes are all valid deployment targets underneath Levyer — they are the infrastructure Levyer runs on, not what it competes with.

At the application level, Levyer defines how software is structured, how modules communicate, how it is secured, deployed, governed, observed, and documented. Your team writes pure business logic. Levyer handles everything from the application model downwards.

The execution model is built on WebAssembly (WASM + WASI). This is not an implementation detail — it is the architectural foundation that makes Levyer's security guarantees, portability, and interface contracts structurally enforced rather than configured.

## Who Levyer is for

- **Engineering teams** who want to focus on business logic without managing infrastructure boilerplate, communication protocols, or security configuration.
- **Operations teams** who need central control over deployments, environments, cost, and compliance across the full application estate.
- **Leadership and management** who need visibility, governance, and the ability to enforce organisational policy without depending on individual teams to get it right.

Levyer is built for the whole organisation — not just engineering.

## The problem Levyer solves

Modern organisations unknowingly give away control. Application code becomes entangled with cloud-provider ecosystems and proprietary services that are nearly impossible to reverse. Security and compliance are managed reactively. Engineering teams spend the majority of their time on infrastructure plumbing. As organisations grow, nobody has a clear, current view of how systems actually work.

The result: locked in to vendors, exposed to security risks, struggling to meet regulatory requirements, unable to move decisively when the landscape changes.

### Specific problems Levyer addresses

- **Hidden costs compound** — Every team rebuilds auth, compliance, and observability from scratch. Patches applied one app at a time. The cost compounds silently.
- **Security is reactive** — Always one step behind the last incident, audit, or regulation change. You never get ahead. You just catch up.
- **AI outpaces controls** — AI writes code faster than anyone can review for security gaps or compliance violations. Risk accumulates with every commit.
- **Understanding fades** — Documentation goes stale. Diagrams are forgotten. As you grow, nobody sees how systems connect — until something breaks.

## How it works

### Your code is a component
You write pure business logic. It's compiled to a WASM component — a sealed, portable unit with declarative requirements and no runtime dependencies. Components contain no proprietary SDKs, no HTTP clients, no authentication code, no TLS handling — just business logic.

### Interfaces are the contract
You interact with standardized interfaces — the implementation doesn't matter. Connect to a database using `wasi:sql`, connect to another system using a custom interface like `myorg:warehouse`. Standardized communication means no need for protocols, SDKs, or credentials in application code.

### Infrastructure is a declaration
You define what you need and how it connects. Need a database? Just declare it and it's ready to use. Best practices are applied automatically at deployment time.

## Core capabilities

### Digital sovereignty — structural, not aspirational
Every application built on Levyer is portable by design. No dependency on any specific cloud provider, infrastructure service, or communication technology. Moving between cloud providers, on-premise, or hybrid is a configuration change — not a development project. EU data residency, GDPR, and data sovereignty requirements are met as a deployment decision.

### Security by design
Security is not a layer added on top. It is embedded in the execution model. Every module runs in a fully isolated WebAssembly sandbox with strict capability-based access control — a module can only access the specific resources (files, network, environment variables) that have been explicitly granted to it. Nothing is accessible by default. Blast radius is structurally contained. Transport encryption, secure inter-module communication, and security hardening are applied automatically at deployment. Cryptographic protocols are independently upgradeable, including a path to post-quantum cryptography.

### Compliance by default
Regulatory compliance is built into every deployment. GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 standards are embedded in the provisioning and deployment pipeline. Compliance is a platform concern — it cannot be bypassed through application code or infrastructure misconfiguration. As regulations evolve, compliance controls are updated centrally and propagate everywhere.

### Independent & secure by design
Levyer combines WebAssembly with its Core platform to deliver:

**Security traits:**
- No blast radius — vulnerabilities cannot spread between modules
- Sandboxed by default — every module runs in isolation
- Memory safe — WebAssembly's memory model prevents entire classes of vulnerabilities
- Zero trust — nothing is accessible without explicit permission

**Independence traits:**
- Portable everywhere — runs identically across any infrastructure
- Provider independence — no lock-in to any cloud or technology
- Best practices — applied automatically at deployment
- Patchable — security updates propagate centrally without application changes

### Central control plane
Leadership and operations get a single control plane for the entire software estate — across every team, application, environment, and provider:
- Cost management: budgets, spend alerts, hard limits per team, application, or environment
- Security posture: enforce policies and apply patches across all applications from one place
- Compliance and governance: define policies once, enforce everywhere, audit trails out of the box
- Scaling: define behaviour centrally; applications scale automatically within defined boundaries

### Team collaboration and ownership
Levyer structures how teams work together around software — with clear ownership, controlled access, and no ambiguity about who is responsible for what:
- Role-based access control with fine-grained permissions across teams and environments
- Application ownership — every application has a defined owner; responsibility is visible and enforced
- Environment-level access restrictions — teams see and interact with exactly what they need, nothing more
- Parallel development — because applications are built from isolated modules, teams work independently without stepping on each other

### Environments
An environment in Levyer is more than a stage label. It is a complete, centrally defined deployment target that encapsulates the provider, the deployment strategy, and the infrastructure topology. Switching between environments — AWS, on-premise, hybrid, single-server — is a platform configuration change. No application code is ever affected.

Each application within an environment gets its own isolated sub-environment — using whatever isolation primitive the provider supports (separate accounts, namespaces, or prefixes). These sub-environments can be further divided for feature branches, experiments, or staging workflows, giving every team full environment parity at every stage of development.

### Living documentation — always current
Architecture diagrams, data flow diagrams, and process diagrams are generated automatically from the actual state of the platform. They are not documents — they are live views. When something changes, the diagram updates. Data protection impact assessments (DPIAs), audit documentation, and architecture reviews are supported by generated, accurate content.

### Full observability
Metrics, distributed tracing, structured logging, and alerting across the entire application estate in one view. Follow a request as it travels across multiple applications and services from entry to resolution.

### Marketplace
Ready-to-use applications and integrations that can be deployed into any environment with a single click — authentication services, CMS platforms, data pipelines, monitoring stacks, analytics tools. Every marketplace application is fully portable and inherits all platform security and compliance guarantees automatically. Organisations can also publish internal applications to a private marketplace, enabling reuse across teams without duplicating infrastructure work.

### Fully automated
Everything handled, nothing can be missed. Levyer automatically manages:
- **Integrations** — connections between services are configured and secured automatically
- **Environments** — complete deployment targets with provider, strategy, and topology encapsulated
- **Documentation** — architecture, data flow, and process diagrams generated from actual state
- **Observability** — metrics, tracing, and logging across the entire estate in one view

### Workspace
The Workspace provides centralized control across the entire organisation:
- Centralized environments — define deployment targets once, use everywhere
- Documentation — generated and kept current automatically
- Integrations — connect services with automatic security and best practices

## The execution model — WebAssembly

Levyer's runtime is built on WebAssembly (Wasm) with WASI. This provides four properties no other runtime combines:

1. **Security by design.** Every module runs in a strict sandbox with capability-based access control. Nothing is reachable unless explicitly granted — no network, no filesystem, no environment variable.
2. **Language-agnostic.** WebAssembly is a compilation target for most major languages — Rust, Go, TypeScript, Python, and more. Teams work in the language that suits them.
3. **Interface-first contracts.** Modules communicate through typed interface definitions (WASI/WIT), not bespoke protocols. Integrations are explicit, versionable, and safe to evolve.
4. **Tiny and portable.** Wasm modules are compact, start in milliseconds, and run identically across cloud, on-premise, edge, and local environments — with no runtime dependency or infrastructure assumption.

### The component model
Developers write pure business logic, which is compiled to a WASM component — a sealed, portable unit with declarative requirements and no runtime dependencies. Components contain no proprietary SDKs, no HTTP clients, no authentication code, no TLS handling — just business logic.

### WIT interfaces
Modules interact with standardized interfaces — the implementation doesn't matter. Connect to a database using `wasi:sql`, connect to another system using a custom interface like `myorg:warehouse`. Standardized communication means no need for protocols, SDKs, or credentials in application code.

### Infrastructure declaration
Developers define what they need and how it connects. Need a database? Just declare it and it's ready to use. Best practices are applied automatically at deployment time.

### Open source
Levyer's core is open source. The platform is auditable, extensible, and free from closed-source lock-in at the foundation.

## Deployment options

- **Any major cloud provider** — AWS, Azure, GCP, and others via provider plugins
- **On-premise** — private data centre deployments
- **Single server** — for small-scale or air-gapped deployments
- **Hybrid** — cloud and on-premise simultaneously
- **Local** — full development and testing without cloud dependencies
- **Levyer Cloud** — fully managed, no infrastructure required

Migrating from Levyer Cloud to self-hosted is always a configuration change, never an application rewrite. Sovereignty is preserved regardless of hosting model.

## Hosting options

### Self-Hosted
Organisations run the Levyer platform on their own infrastructure. Full control over every layer — ideal for organisations with strict sovereignty requirements or existing infrastructure they want to retain.

### Levyer Cloud (Fully Managed)
Levyer operates the platform on your behalf. No provider accounts, no infrastructure management, no platform maintenance. Deploy applications directly and Levyer handles everything underneath.

The same provider-agnostic architecture applies — migrating from Levyer Cloud to self-hosted is always a configuration change, never an application rewrite. Sovereignty is preserved regardless of which hosting model you choose.

## For development teams

Levyer removes the complexity that slows teams down. Developers write pure business logic — focused, minimal, and free of infrastructure concerns. The platform handles communication protocols, infrastructure provisioning, security hardening, and deployment automatically.

This makes development faster, safer, and more predictable. It also makes AI-assisted development significantly more effective: because modules contain only business logic with no infrastructure or protocol code, AI tools can generate high-quality, focused code without introducing infrastructure vulnerabilities or compliance violations.

## Business benefits summary

- **Built once, used everywhere** — Security, compliance, and observability are handled by the platform. No reinvention. No compound costs.
- **Security by design** — Compliance and hardening are built into the architecture. You're always ahead, not catching up.
- **AI-safe by default** — The platform enforces security and compliance automatically. AI-generated code is safe by design.
- **Clear architecture** — Declarative infrastructure makes connections visible. Anyone can understand the system at a glance.
- **Digital sovereignty** — Structural independence from any provider, vendor, or technology
- **Zero vendor lock-in** — Switch providers, move on-premise, or change deployment models at any time
- **Central control** — Cost, security, compliance, and scaling governed from one place
- **Full observability** — Metrics, tracing, and logs across every application in one view
- **Team clarity** — Clear ownership, access control, and parallel development without friction
- **Faster development** — Teams focus entirely on business logic; infrastructure is handled automatically

## Current status

Levyer is pre-launch. The architecture and model described here reflect the platform being built with early design partners. We are onboarding our first design partner organisations now. Contact us at https://levyer.com/#access to express interest.

## Frequently asked questions

**What languages and frameworks are supported?**
Levyer supports all languages and frameworks that can compile to WebAssembly — including Rust, Go, TypeScript, Python, and many others. Because WebAssembly is a portable compilation target, adoption is growing rapidly, and we actively push to expand and improve language support so teams can keep using the tools they already know.

**What is Levyer?**
A platform that gives organisations the freedom to build software on their own terms — secure, compliant, independent, and built to last. It provides a single foundation to govern how software is built, where it runs, who controls it, and what it costs.

**Who is Levyer for?**
Organisations that want structural independence from vendors and central control over their software estate. It serves leadership, operations, and engineering teams who need a unified platform for cost management, security governance, compliance enforcement, and deployment flexibility across any infrastructure.

**How does Levyer compare to Kubernetes?**
Levyer sits a layer above Kubernetes. Kubernetes manages containers and workload scheduling — it is infrastructure. Levyer gives you a complete application layer: how software is structured, how it communicates, how it is secured, deployed, governed, and observed — all the way up to the business level. Kubernetes can be one of the deployment targets underneath Levyer, alongside bare servers, Docker hosts, or cloud-managed runtimes.

**Why does WebAssembly give Levyer properties other runtimes don't?**
WebAssembly gives Levyer four properties no other runtime combines at once:

- Security by design — every module runs in a strict sandbox with capability-based access control. Nothing is reachable unless explicitly granted — no network, no filesystem, no environment variable. This structural isolation keeps blast radius small by default.
- Language-agnostic — WebAssembly is a compilation target for most major languages — Rust, Go, TypeScript, Python, and more. Teams work in the language that suits them; the platform speaks one runtime.
- Interface-first contracts — modules communicate through typed interface definitions (WASI/WIT), not bespoke protocols. This makes integrations explicit, versionable, and safe to evolve.
- Tiny and portable — Wasm modules are compact, start in milliseconds, and run identically across cloud, on-premise, edge, and local environments — with no runtime dependency or infrastructure assumption.

**Can Levyer run on AWS, on-prem, and hybrid setups?**
Yes. Levyer runs on any major cloud provider, on-premise, on single servers, and in hybrid configurations. Switching between deployment targets is a platform configuration change — no application code is ever affected.

**What stage is Levyer at today?**
Levyer is currently pre-launch and onboarding its first design partners. A working prototype demonstrates the core architecture, and we're building the full platform alongside early adopters. We're working closely with organisations to refine the platform based on real-world use cases before general availability.

**How does Levyer make AI development safer and more efficient?**
Levyer makes AI development safer and more efficient by limiting AI to small, pure business-logic modules while the platform handles security, isolation, and compliance. That keeps changes simpler to reason about, reduces the blast radius of mistakes, and avoids infrastructure or regulatory problems being smuggled in through generated code.

**How does Levyer make AI workloads safer and more efficient?**
Levyer makes AI workloads safer and more efficient by connecting services through clear, simple interfaces instead of ad‑hoc integrations. Those same interfaces work extremely well for AI: it's easy to plug new tools or models in, reuse existing services, and control who can access what, without rebuilding your systems each time.

## Links

- Homepage: https://levyer.com/
- Early access: https://levyer.com/#access
- Documentation: https://levyer.com/docs
- Open source: https://github.com/levyer-com
- Contact: contact@levyer.com