What's New on DigitalOcean App Platform

Welcome to What’s New on DigitalOcean App Platform— your weekly roundup of the latest updates for App Platform. Each week, we’ll share new feature releases, technical tutorials, or video walkthroughs to help you stay ahead of the curve and keep building. Check back regularly for new insights and inspiration, or get started now: Deploy Your First App on App Platform

Week of September 23rd

Product Update Deploy Lovable.dev Apps to Production with App Platform

DigitalOcean App Platform now supports a new, streamlined workflow for deploying applications built on Lovable.dev directly to DigitalOcean App Platform. This integration bridges the gap between building an application with natural language and launching it in a secure, production-grade environment, allowing you to move from idea to live application in minutes without complex configuration.

What’s new

• Direct Lovable.dev Integration: Now you can seamlessly deploy applications built on Lovable.dev to DigitalOcean App Platform. App Platform supports the common Lovable.dev technology stack of Vite/React for the frontend and Supabase for the backend.

• Automated Deployment Pipeline: By connecting your Lovable project’s GitHub repository to App Platform, you create a fully automated deployment pipeline. Every code change or feature addition made in Lovable is synchronized with GitHub and can be set to auto-deploy on our platform with zero downtime.

Benefits

• Go from AI to Production Instantly: Bridge the crucial gap between an AI-generated application and a live, scalable website. You can focus on building features in Lovable, knowing a clear deployment path is waiting for you.

• Experience Zero-Configuration Deployment: App Platform’s built-in Node.js buildpack automatically detects and builds your Vite/React application without requiring you to write any Dockerfiles or YAML configuration files.

• Access Production-Grade Features: Your Lovable app benefits from App Platform’s robust, managed infrastructure. This includes built-in HTTPS, a global CDN, health checks, and zero-downtime deploys right out of the box, making production-level features accessible even to non-coders and first-time users.

How to get started

Step 1: Build Your App on Lovable.dev

• Create and refine your application using Lovable’s natural language interface. Lovable automatically handles version control by synchronizing your code with a GitHub repository.

Step 2: Prepare Your Application for Deployment

• Before deploying, ensure your application’s secrets, like Supabase credentials, are not hardcoded in your source code. Your application should be configured to use the environment variables VITE_SUPABASE_URL and VITE_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY.

Step 3: Deploy to DigitalOcean App Platform

1. Navigate to the DigitalOcean App Platform page and click “Create App”.

2. Select your Lovable project’s repository from GitHub.

3. App Platform will automatically detect your project as a Node.js application. You can deploy it as a Web Service or, if it’s a frontend-only app, change the component type to Static Site.

4. In the configuration settings, add your environment variables: VITE_SUPABASE_URL and VITE_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY with the corresponding values from your Supabase project.

5. Click deploy. App Platform will handle the build process and launch your application.

For a complete, step-by-step tutorial, check out our video guide covering the entire process from building an application in Lovable to deploying it on App Platform.

Resources

• DigitalOcean App Platform

• Lovable.dev

• App Platform Documentation

Week of September 15th

Product Update Outbound VPC for App Platform is now Generally Available

DigitalOcean App Platform now supports outbound VPC integration, enabling your apps to connect privately to databases, Droplets, and other resources across any region through VPC-to-VPC peering. This eliminates the need for public internet connectivity and creates secure, performant private network architectures at scale. Now, you can deploy multi-tier applications with confidence, knowing that your data layer remains completely isolated from external networks while maintaining the simplicity and scalability that makes App Platform powerful. This capability is transformative for digital-native enterprise (DNE) workloads, microservices architectures, and any application requiring enhanced security controls.

What’s new

• Outbound VPC connectivity for apps – Attach an App Platform app to a VPC in its region so your code talks to private services (Droplets, Managed Databases, DOKS nodes) over private IPs.

• Cross-region private access with VPC peering – Peer your app’s regional VPC to VPCs in other regions and keep traffic private end-to-end, even when the resource lives elsewhere.

• Simple, spec-first configuration – Add a vpc.id to your app spec by following the steps below and redeploy.

• General availability – Available today for all regions except ATL for outbound integration only - this means that the App can talk to resources in any region, but not vice versa (droplet to app via VPC).

• Built for real developer needs – This feature directly addresses long-standing requests to connect apps to Droplets and Managed Database over a private network.

Benefits

• Security by design: Your app reaches internal services (droplets, databases, DOKS) over private IPs, reducing public exposure and simplifying controls with existing VPC rules.

• Lower latency: When your app and database run in the same datacenter (e.g., NYC1) on the same VPC, traffic stays on private east-west paths with no internet/NAT hops—reducing round-trip time and smoothing tail latency.

• Multi-region flexibility: Keep an app in one region and a database in another, and still connect privately using VPC peering. This is especially helpful for regional data residency and gradual migrations.**

How to get started

1. Confirm access and region – Outbound VPC for App Platform is now generally available in all regions except ATL.
2. Find your VPC ID – List your VPCs and copy the UUID of the one you want the app to use:

doctl vpcs list

3. Attach the app to a VPC – Add the VPC to your app spec (replace your-id with the VPC UUID):

vpc:

  id: your-id

Save and redeploy. From your app’s Console, you can verify private reachability (for example, by curling a private IP on your VPC).

4. (Optional) – Reach resources in another region with VPC peering If your target resource (say, a database) lives in a different region, peer your app’s VPC to the remote VPC:

# Example: create a peering between two VPCs

doctl vpcs peerings create my-app-peering \

  --vpc-ids <VPC_ID_IN_APP_REGION>,<REMOTE_VPC_ID>

VPC peering is available across all regions (with limited exceptions noted in docs) and lets resources communicate over private IPs as if they were on the same network.

Note: Region/datacenter mapping: You create Apps in regions (eg. NYC, SFO). Your app is deployed in the first datacenter in that region (NYC1, SFO1). Apps connect directly to VPCs in the corresponding datacenter for their region:

fra → fra1, nyc → nyc1, tor → tor1. Use peering to reach other regions privately.

Resources

• How to Enable App Platform VPC (docs) – configuration steps & app spec snippet.

Week of September 8th

Product Update Build and deploy your MCP server on App Platform

What’s new

DigitalOcean App Platform now supports seamless deployment of remote MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers with essential AI infrastructure features like HTTP response streaming and subdomain routing—enabling developers to build centralized, cost-effective tool providers for AI applications.

• Remote MCP Server Deployment – Deploy centralized tool providers that AI assistants can access via HTTP with OAuth 2.1 authentication

• HTTP Response Streaming (SSE) – Enable real-time, responsive AI chatbot experiences with server-sent events support

• Subdomain Routing – Build sophisticated multi-tenant applications with precise service organization using custom subdomains

How to get started

1. Clone the MCP Server Template Start with our community template that includes best practices and deployment configuration:

git clone https://github.com/do-community/do-remote-mcp-server-template.git

cd do-remote-mcp-server-template

2. Configure Your App Spec Enable streaming and cost optimization features in your app.yaml:

name: my-mcp-server

services:

- name: mcp-api

  source_dir: /

  github:

    repo: your-username/your-mcp-server

    branch: main

  run_command: python app.py

  environment_slug: python

  instance_count: 1

  instance_size_slug: basic-xxs

  http_port: 8080

  routes:

  - path: /

  **disable_edge_cache:** **true**  **#** **Enable** **HTTP** **Response** **Streaming**

  **inactivity_sleep:** **true**    **#** **Enable** **Scale-to-Zero** **(contact** **support** **first)**

3. Deploy to App Platform:

doctl apps create --spec app.yaml



Or,



Use App Platform Console and Deploy from Git

Check out our comprehensive video tutorial that walks through the entire deployment process, from template setup to production configuration.

Resources

• MCP Server Template Repository

• MCP Server Template with Oauth

• App Platform Subdomain Routing Documentation – Advanced routing configuration guide

• HTTP Response Streaming Setup – Enable real-time streaming responses

Week of September 1st

Product Update App Platform Now Supports Integration with AI-coding Assistants using MCP

What’s new

Now you can integrate AI-powered coding assistants – including Claude Code, Cursor, and VS Code MCP plugins – directly with DigitalOcean App Platform using the new DigitalOcean MCP Server. This means that your AI assistant can deploy applications, spin up databases, manage Spaces, check billing, and more – without leaving your coding environment. Go from AI-generated code to production in just a few prompts with our MCP Server Setup Tutorial, Video Walkthrough, and DigitalOcean MCP Server GitHub.

How to get started

The AI development revolution shouldn’t stop at your IDE. Whether you’re building your first AI-powered app or deploying your hundredth, App Platform + MCP integration takes you from code to production faster than ever. We’ve built a working tutorial to take you from idea to production using only prompts. It uses MCP, DigitalOcean MCP Server, GitHub MCP, and Claude Code so you can go from building the app → committing to GitHub → staging with preview deployments → all the way to merging in production.

Check out our Claude Code Tutorial and GitHub repo.