⚡ Pulstack – Instant Static Site Deployment with Pulumi

pulstack is a developer-friendly tool that lets you deploy static websites to AWS (S3 + CloudFront) or GitHub Pages with zero configuraton. It uses Pulumi under the hood to treat infrastructure as code, so your deployments are fully automated and version-controlled.

🧑‍💻 Who Is This For?

Pulstack is perfect if you:

• Have a static website (HTML/CSS/JS or React/Vite/Next.js build)
• Want to deploy to AWS (S3+CloudFront) or GitHub Pages in 1 command
• Don’t want to write YAML, CloudFormation, or Terraform
• Like simple CLI workflows with guided and simple prompts

✨ Features

• 🚀 Deploy static sites to AWS S3 with CloudFront CDN

• 🌍 Automatically create Repo and publish to GitHub Pages

• 🔒 Secure AWS deployments using best practices (no public buckets!)

• 💡 Clean CLI prompts to guide you through setup

• 🧨 One-command destroy of your whole stack when you're done

📦 Prerequisites

You only need to install the tools for the provider you want to use (AWS or GitHub). Here's a breakdown:

🔧 Required for All

1. Node.js

node -v

2. Pulumi

Install it from https://www.pulumi.com/docs/install/

pulumi version
pulumi login

Important

You'll need to log in to Pulumi (Mandatory)

🌩️ If You Want to Deploy to AWS (S3 + CloudFront)

✅ Install AWS CLI

(for S3/CloudFront deployments only, You can skip this if you want to deploy on GitHub)

aws --version

If not installed: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/install-cliv2.html

Create IAM user in aws console with necessary permissions

• s3:* – Create and manage buckets, upload files, set bucket policies.
• cloudfront:* – Create and configure CloudFront distributions.
• iam:GetUser, iam:PassRole – Required for linking CloudFront with S3 via OAI.
• iam:CreateServiceLinkedRole – Needed for enabling AWS services like CloudFront.
• logs:* – For any logging resources created by Pulumi or AWS services.
• sts:GetCallerIdentity – Used by Pulumi to identify the active IAM user.

🔐 Configure AWS Credentials

aws configure

You'll need:

• AWS Access Key ID
• AWS Secret Access Key
• Default region (e.g., us-east-1)

Ensure credentials are valid:

aws sts get-caller-identity

Note

Make sure the IAM user has the necessary permissions.

🐙 If You Want to Deploy to GitHub Pages

🔐 Create GitHub Token

(for GitHub Pages only, You can skip this if you want to deploy on AWS S3)

• Create a Personal Access Token(Classic) with repo and delete_repo permission enabled.

• Save this somewhere safe — you’ll need it during init.

🚀 Quick Start

📁 Project Structure

.
├── index.js              # Entry CLI to handle commands
├── deploy.js             # AWS S3 + CloudFront deployment logic
├── deployGithub.js       # GitHub Pages deployment logic with Pulumi
├── destroy.js            # Stack destroy logic
├── pulumiProgram.js      # Defines AWS infra using Pulumi
├── config.json           # User config file generated at init
├── public/               # Your static site directory (e.g. index.html, assets)
├── init.js               # The init logics

💡 This structure is generated or expected after running node index.js init.

1. Clone and Install

git clone https://github.com/Kiran1689/pulstack.git
cd pulstack
npm install

2. Initialize project

▶️ For AWS:

node index.js init

Follow the prompts:

• Project name

• Description

• Stack name (e.g., dev)

• AWS region

• Option to auto-generate public/index.html to quick test Pulstack instantly — even without any files!

The config.json file will be created to store your inputs locally.

▶️ For GitHub Pages:

node index.js init --github

Follow prompts:

• GitHub repo name

• Stack name (e.g., dev)

• Build dir (e.g., ./build or ./public)

• GitHub token (with repo + delete permissions)

The config.json file will be created to store your inputs locally.

3. Deploy Your Site

🚀Deploy to AWS:

node index.js deploy --target aws --dir ./public
# --dir ./public Points to your static site files. For React apps, use ./build

What will happen after running this?

📁 public/
   │
   └── node index.js deploy --target aws
             ↓
       Pulumi provisions:
       - ✅ S3 Bucket
       - ✅ Uploads static files
       - ✅ CloudFront CDN
             ↓
       🌐 S3 Bucket name
       🌐 Returns your site URL!

✅ On success, you'll see:

• AWS S3 bucket name

• Live CloudFront URL

Note

You can replace ./public with your build folder (./build, ./dist, etc.)

Note

In AWS S3 console, the bucket name will be your project name

🚀 Deploy to GitHub Pages:

node index.js deploy --target aws --dir ./public

What will happen after running this?

📁 public/
   │
   └── node index.js deploy --target github-pages
             ↓
       Pulumi provisions:
       - ✅ Creates a new repo
       - ✅ Pushes static content to gh-pages (using simple-git)
       - ✅ Enables GitHub Pages
             ↓
       🌐 Outputs a live site URL!

✅ On success, you'll see:

• GitHub Pages URL

Note

You can replace ./public with your build folder (./build, ./dist, etc.)

4. Destroy

To destroy the stack run:

node index.js destroy

Note

The stack name and project name will be fetched from the config.json file

🛠 Built With

• Pulumi

• AWS S3 + CloudFront

• GitHub Pages

• Node.js

• simple-git

🙌 Credits

Inspired by the power of Pulumi and the simplicity of static hosting. Feel free to fork, extend, and customize!

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues and feature requests are welcome! Feel free to check issues page.

💬 Need Help?

Open an issue or start a discussion. Let's build better deployments together with pulumi.

🪪 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.