Overview

In the knowledge-economy era, an efficient Q&A space is mission-critical for teams that live on shared context. Affine is a young open-source platform that merges documents, tables, and Q&A into one real-time workspace—complete with Markdown, version history, and plugin hooks. Combine it with Clawcloud Run’s forever-free $5 container credit and App Store one-click installs, and you’ll be running in minutes. This guide walks through the setup and highlights a few solid optimizations.

1. Why Clawcloud Run + Affine?

Clawcloud Run perks

• $0 launch cost – GitHub-verified accounts receive $5 in credits every month; no credit card.
• Respectable specs – Up to 4 vCPUs, 8 GB RAM, and 10 Gbps egress, plenty for early-stage traffic.
• One-click UX – A built-in App Store and clean Docker support mean less time on ops.

Affine strengths

• All-in-one knowledge flow – Seamlessly switch between docs, spreadsheets, and Q&A; everything stays in sync.
• Friendly to hackers – AGPL codebase, modular plugin API (knowledge graph, external storage, SSO, etc.).
• Cross-platform – Desktop, mobile, and PWA offline support out of the box.

2. Deploying Affine in Three Steps

1. Sign up for Clawcloud Run

Go to https://console.run.claw.cloud, sign in with GitHub (accounts > 180 days old stay in the free tier), and choose the Singapore region for low latency and smoother TLS provisioning.

2. Launch from the App Store

APP Store ❤️ Affine：https://template.run.claw.cloud/?openapp=system-fastdeploy%3FtemplateName%3Daffine

1. Open App Store → search Affine.
2. Click Deploy App. After 3–5 minutes the container shows Running. Open the temporary URL—if you see the Affine setup screen, you’re good.

3. Initial configuration

1. Create the admin user, site name, and access mode (public or private).
2. Enable end-to-end encryption in Settings to protect sensitive docs and threads.

3. Level-Up & Extend

3.1 Custom domain & HTTPS

• Add a CNAME under Public Address in the container settings and point DNS to the generated hostname (disable CDN proxying for faster validation).
• Clawcloud auto-issues a Let’s Encrypt cert; allow 3–10 minutes. If it stalls, restart the container or fall back to manual ACME.

3.2 Plugins & integrations

• Knowledge graph:
  npm install --global @affine/knowledge-graph inside the container, then enable it in the UI.
• S3 storage:
  Set environment vars STORAGE_PROVIDER=s3 S3_ACCESS_KEY=<key> S3_SECRET_KEY=<secret> S3_BUCKET=<bucket> and restart to move attachments off-box.

4. Wrap-up

Clawcloud Run plus Affine gives teams a zero-cost, high-performance space for docs, spreadsheets, and Q&A—all in one container. Plugin work may require a custom image, but pre-installing your favorites or tapping the growing community (see https://affine.pro/docs) makes life easy.

Start your instance today and watch your team’s collective brain take shape.