Private Apps Overview
Learn how to extend Tempest with your own custom functionality and data using Private Apps
About Private Apps
Tempest Private Apps allow you to extend the Tempest platform with custom integrations for your organization’s tools and workflows. This guide introduces Private Apps and covers their core capabilities, development approaches, and common use cases.
Want to spend more time building and less time reading? Jump right into our Quickstart guide to learn how to build your first Private App.
What is a Private App?
A Private App is a customized application that integrates with the Tempest platform to provide coverage for your organization’s specific tools and workflows. Each Private App:
- Runs as a standalone service that communicates with Tempest via our API
- Has full access to Tempest platform capabilities, just like first-party apps
- Can be version controlled and deployed using your existing CI/CD pipelines
- Maintains its own state and can be monitored using your existing observability tools
You can develop Private Apps using:
- Our Go SDK and CLI: Provides a type-safe, maintainable way to build apps with full IDE support and automatic code generation
- Our HTTP API: Enables integration with any language or framework that can make HTTP requests
Private Apps are built with code and work seamlessly with your existing infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform, CDK, and Pulumi.
Capabilities
Private Apps become a seamless part of your Tempest platform. You can:
Core Lifecycle Operations
Every Private App implements these basic operations:
| Operation | Description |
|---|---|
| Create | Called when users create resources in Tempest (typically via recipes). Handles initial provisioning and setup. |
| Read & List | Called when Tempest syncs your resource metadata. Frequency determined by your plan. |
| Update | Handles state changes and configuration updates for existing resources. |
| Delete | Called when users delete resources. Handles cleanup and deprovisioning. |
Additional Features
Private Apps also support these built-in capabilities:
| Operation | Description |
|---|---|
| Healthchecks | Service discovery and healthchecks for the resources managed by your Private App. |
| Instructions | Custom installation instructions for your Private App resources. |
| Links | Add links to your Private App resources for documentation, dashboards, endpoints, and more. |
| Taxonomy | Define how your Private App resources are categorized and organized. |
| Actions | Custom user-triggerable actions for your Private App resources. |
Common Use Cases
Private Apps can integrate with any tool controllable via your code. Here are some examples we’ve seen our customers use Private Apps for:
- Add support creating ArgoCD application pipelines
- Add support for creating a DataDog monitor and dashboard
- Automatically add a tenant to an internal cluster
Have a use case but not sure how to build it? Contact us and we can help you build it.
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