Cloudflare Containers let a Workers app call on-demand serverless containers for workloads that need a full filesystem, a specific runtime, existing container images, or more CPU, memory, and disk. They do not replace Workers; Workers still handle entry, routing, and platform bindings while containers run the heavy runtime-specific work.
The Cloudflare Edge Platform series answers one product question: how do Workers, D1, KV, R2, Durable Objects, Queues, Workflows, Cache, Images, Email, Turnstile, Observability, Browser Run, and Containers help you run a website or app cheaply and reliably?
Before a Cloudflare app goes live, do not stop at a successful deploy. Check Custom Domains, Routes, www/root redirects, maintenance pages, CPU/memory/subrequest limits, log sampling, and fallback paths. This appendix turns the Edge Platform series into a production checklist.
Nearly every frontier open-source model in 2026 is MoE: Ornith 35B activates only 3B to beat 31B dense models, MiniMax M3 uses 456B total but 45.9B active to hit SWE-bench Pro 59%, DeepSeek V4 runs 1.6T total with 49B active. This post explains why MoE dominates coding and agentic benchmarks using four case studies.
Agent Platform uses a Cloudflare-first architecture: local `npm run dev` runs Node-based simulations, while production maps to Workers + Workers Assets + D1 + KV + R2 + Vectorize + Queues + Workflows + Durable Objects + Workers AI. The Runtime interfaces stay the same (InMemory → Cloudflare implementations), so upper layers migrate without noticing. Deployment requires only `wrangler login` → create resources → fill in IDs → `wrangler secret put` → `wrangler deploy`. CI/CD watches the main branch and runs typecheck + build + dry-run + migration + deploy.
The full deployment path for a Python agent, from local uv run to Docker to a public API on Cloudflare Containers: the Worker enforces authentication, the Container runs FastAPI, secrets never enter the image, and the service sleeps automatically after 10 idle minutes—the right way for a side project to save money.
Kamal deploys immutable images from an operator over SSH and switches traffic through kamal-proxy; it is not a scheduler and does not operate hosts or data.
MLOps interviews test whether you have experience pushing models to production. Key topics: ML pipeline CI/CD (how it differs from software CI/CD), model registry and version management, A/B testing design and pitfalls, inference scaling strategies (horizontal scaling, model compression, caching), and production monitoring and alerting design.
MIT research says 95% of enterprise AI pilots yield zero return. OpenAI and Anthropic announced multi-billion-dollar joint ventures in the same week, wholesale adopting the Forward Deployed Engineer model that Palantir has used for over a decade to bring AI into the enterprise battlefield.
Deploying OpenClaw to the cloud comes down to four decisions: where the Gateway binds, where state lives, who can reach it, and how you recover. Which platform you pick is the least important of them.
Docker lets you bundle your application together with its environment, eliminating the 'works on my machine' problem. Combined with multi-stage builds and Compose, it's an essential tool for modern backend deployment.
@opennextjs/cloudflare enables Next.js App Router deployments on Cloudflare Workers — dynamic SSR runs in a Worker, static assets are served from Cloudflare Assets. Zero server management, but with clear feature limitations.
PM2 keeps your Node.js app running on a server — auto-restarts on crash, supports cluster mode to max out CPU cores, and handles log management. Nearly every Node.js app deployed on a VM or VPS needs it.