service— a long-running container (daemon, bot, webhook receiver, MCP server, custom API). Optional public HTTPS URL; scale to zero on demand withstop/scale(you only pay while running).job— a container that runs to completion once (ETL, backup, scrape, render).schedule— a job on a cron/rate expression (“cron for code”). Distinct from thecronprimitive, which schedules AI agent prompts.
Creating a workload and opening a shell (
exec/ssh) are sensitive — depending on the user’s Account Kit they may require human approval (the call returns status: "pending_approval"). Compute is billed by running time (vCPU-seconds + GB-seconds) in credits; a service scaled to zero costs ~nothing.Create a workload
naive.compute.* (your default user) vs naive.forUser(id).compute.* (an end-user).
Lifecycle, runs & logs
Secrets
Encrypted env vars are injected into the workload’s tasks at start:Interactive shell (ECS Exec)
session-manager-plugin, and the image must contain /bin/sh. Sessions are approval-gated and transcript-logged.
CLI
Pair with a Queue
A computeservice that long-polls a Queue (naive queue receive → process → naive queue ack) is a cheap autoscaling worker.