SST Ion Has a Free API: The Infrastructure-as-Code Framework That Makes AWS Feel Like Vercel

#sst #api #aws #serverless

AWS has 200+ services. Deploying a simple app requires CloudFormation, IAM roles, API Gateway configs, and S3 buckets. SST Ion abstracts this into simple TypeScript components — deploy to AWS with Vercel-like simplicity.

What Is SST Ion?

SST Ion is an open-source infrastructure-as-code framework. It uses Pulumi under the hood and provides high-level components for common patterns: APIs, websites, databases, cron jobs, queues, and more. You write TypeScript, SST deploys to AWS.

The Free Framework

SST Ion is completely free and open source:

TypeScript components: Define infrastructure in code you already know
Live Lambda dev: Instant hot-reload for Lambda functions
Linked resources: Type-safe access to AWS resources
Multi-stage: Dev, staging, prod with one config
Console: Web dashboard for monitoring
Drop-in auth: Cognito, Google, GitHub auth

Quick Start

npx create-sst@latest my-app
cd my-app
npx sst dev

Define infrastructure (sst.config.ts):

export default $config({
  app(input) {
    return { name: 'my-app', removal: 'remove' };
  },
  async run() {
    // API
    const api = new sst.aws.ApiGatewayV2('Api');
    api.route('GET /users', 'src/users.list');
    api.route('POST /users', 'src/users.create');

    // Database
    const db = new sst.aws.Dynamo('Database', {
      fields: { userId: 'string', email: 'string' },
      primaryIndex: { hashKey: 'userId' },
    });

    // Link resources (type-safe!)
    api.route('GET /users', {
      handler: 'src/users.list',
      link: [db],
    });

    // Static site
    const site = new sst.aws.StaticSite('Web', {
      path: 'web',
      build: { command: 'npm run build', output: 'dist' },
      environment: { VITE_API_URL: api.url },
    });

    // Cron job
    new sst.aws.Cron('DailyReport', {
      schedule: 'rate(1 day)',
      job: 'src/report.handler',
    });

    return { api: api.url, site: site.url };
  },
});

Access linked resources type-safely:

// src/users.ts
import { Resource } from 'sst';
import { DynamoDBClient } from '@aws-sdk/client-dynamodb';

const db = new DynamoDBClient({});

export async function list() {
  // Resource.Database.name is typed!
  const result = await db.scan({ TableName: Resource.Database.name });
  return { statusCode: 200, body: JSON.stringify(result.Items) };
}

Why Teams Choose SST

A startup was spending 2 hours per feature on CloudFormation YAML. After switching to SST, the same infrastructure took 5 minutes in TypeScript — with autocomplete, type checking, and live reload during development. Their infrastructure code went from 500 lines of YAML to 50 lines of TypeScript.

Who Is This For?

AWS developers tired of CloudFormation and CDK complexity
Full-stack developers wanting Vercel DX on AWS
Startups building on AWS without a dedicated DevOps team
Teams wanting type-safe infrastructure with live development

Start Building on AWS

SST Ion makes AWS feel simple. TypeScript infrastructure, live development, type-safe resources.

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