An Environment is an isolation boundary inside an Application.

Typical examples are production, staging, and per-developer sandboxes.

Why they exist

• Blast radius: Keep staging mistakes away from production traffic.
• Compute attachment: Worker nodes and managed compute are attached at the environment layer so all services in that stage share the same pool.
• Configuration: Environment-level settings apply to every service unless a service overrides them.

Draft vs active

Some workflows distinguish draft environments (safe iteration) from active ones that receive customer traffic. Use your organisation’s policy and the in-product labels as the source of truth.

Relationship

Environments belong to an Application. Services are created inside an environment, and Worker Nodes (or managed compute) attach at this layer so every service in that stage shares the same pool.

See also

• How dFlow is structured: where environments sit in the model.
• Attach compute to an environment: bind Worker Nodes or managed compute to a stage.
• Services: what runs inside an environment.
• Draft vs active environments: how draft and active appear in the UI.