Help & Documentation

Workflow Overview

FluffyStack exists to help teams answer one question: which cloud services should we use, and why?

The site is built around a four-step flow: discover → compare → choose → govern. You don't have to follow it in order — most pages stand on their own — but if you're new, this is the typical journey from "I'm planning a project" to "our approved service list is enforced in production".

1. Step 1Discover

   Browse the full catalogue of 149 services across 9 cloud providers. Use the search bar with directives, filter chips, or browse by category in the column view.

2. Step 2Visualise

   See the cloud landscape from above with 7 interactive charts: treemap, honeycomb, sunburst, network graph, sankey flow, radar, and coverage map.

3. Step 3Compare

   Pick up to 4 services and see them side by side. Includes a one-click 'compare with equivalents' button on every service detail page.

4. Step 4Approve

   Build your organisation's approved cloud service list. Add services, drag to reorder, group by provider. Save to a shareable URL or import an existing list.

5. Step 5Govern

   Export your list as services.json, services.md, AWS SCP, Azure Policy, GCP Org Policy, Terraform (.tf), or a print-friendly PDF for governance committees.

6. Step 6Migrate

   Already on one cloud? The migration assistant maps your current services onto the equivalent services on a different provider, marking exact, partial, or missing matches.

7. Step 7Audit

   Compare two saved lists side by side to see what's been added, removed, or unchanged. Useful for quarterly reviews and migration tracking.

What Each Page Does

Search Directives

The search bar supports Google-style directives that filter results before fuzzy matching runs. Combine multiple directives with free-text terms.

Available directives

Negation

Prefix any directive with - to exclude matches:

Quoted phrases

Wrap multi-word phrases in double quotes to keep them as a single search term:

Cloud Glossary

Plain-English definitions for common cloud terminology. Every abbreviation in this glossary is also wired into the search — typing K8s matches services tagged kubernetes, typing LB matches load-balancer, and so on. You don't need to know the full terminology to find what you're looking for.

Building Your Approved List

The Service Builder page is where you assemble the cloud services your organisation has approved for use. Two columns: catalogue on the left, approved list on the right.

Adding services

• Click the button next to any catalogue item
• Drag a catalogue item onto the approved drop zone
• Append ?add=service-id to the URL (used by the "Add to Service Builder" button on service detail pages)
• Append ?services=id1,id2,id3 to load an entire list at once

Reordering

• Drag the grip handle on any approved item to reorder
• Keyboard: Tab to a handle, Space to pick up, ↑↓ to move, Space to drop
• The visual list always groups by provider — moving across providers reorders within the source group

Sharing

The Share button saves your list to the FluffyStack API and gives you a short URL. Anyone with the URL can load the same list. Lists expire after 90 days unless re-saved.

Import & Export

Lists can be imported from and exported to several formats. The smart import analyser detects the format automatically.

Supported import formats

• services.json — FluffyStack v1 hierarchical format
• services.md — FluffyStack v1 hierarchical markdown format
• AWS SCP — Service Control Policy JSON
• Azure Policy — Resource policy definition JSON
• GCP Organization Policy — Org policy YAML/JSON

Export formats

Governance Policies

The platform-native exports (AWS SCP, Azure Policy, GCP Org Policy) generate deny-by-default policies. They allow only the services on your approved list and deny everything else. This is the strongest enforcement model.

Migration Planning

The Migration Assistant maps services across clouds using the equivalence data baked into each service. Match quality is one of:

Embedding in Wikis

Click Embed snippet in the export panel to copy an <iframe> that renders your approved list chromelessly. Drop it into Confluence, Notion, internal wikis, or any HTML host.

The embed updates whenever the host page is reloaded — but the service IDs are baked into the URL, so the embed itself stays static. To change the list shown, paste a new snippet.

Public API

FluffyStack exposes a JSON API for programmatic access to the full service catalogue, governance policy generation, and list management. Use it from CI pipelines, LLM agents, Terraform modules, or your own tooling.

Base URL

All responses are JSON. HTTPS only.

Authentication

Read-only catalogue endpoints work without a key. Governance endpoints (policy generation, list creation, exports) require a free API key. Get one by signing in on the Account page.

Pass your key via the X-API-Key header or the api_key query parameter.

Rate limits

Every response includes X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, and X-RateLimit-Reset headers.

Endpoints

Examples

curl "https://api.fluffystack.dev/v1/services?provider=aws&category=compute"

curl -X POST https://api.fluffystack.dev/v1/policies/aws-scp \
  -H "X-API-Key: flsk_your_key_here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"serviceIds": ["aws-ec2", "aws-s3", "aws-lambda"]}'

Schema validation

Exported service lists include a $schema pointer to the published JSON Schema. Use it to validate exports in your CI pipeline:

Accessibility

FluffyStack is built to WCAG 2.2 AA standards. The site honours your operating system preferences:

• Dark mode — auto-detected from prefers-color-scheme
• Reduced motion — auto-detected from prefers-reduced-motion
• Browser zoom — text reflows at any zoom level up to 200%
• Keyboard navigation — every interactive element is reachable via Tab and operable via Space/Enter
• Visible focus rings — all focusable elements have a 3px focus indicator
• Skip-to-content link — first Tab on every page
• ARIA live regions — list changes are announced to screen readers

In addition, the colour filter overlay (palette icon in the header) provides tinted overlays for users with visual stress or Irlen syndrome. The theme toggle (sun/moon icon) lets you override OS dark mode.

Reading preferences (book icon)

The book icon in the header opens a panel with four independent knobs for neurodiverse and low-vision users:

• Font — default (Geist), Atkinson Hyperlegible (designed for low-vision users, open letter shapes), or OpenDyslexic (weighted bottoms that help with letter flipping).
• Motion— follow system, always reduce, or always animate. Useful if your OS preference doesn't match your actual preference for this site.
• Line spacing — normal, relaxed, or loose. Loose adds generous vertical space, word-spacing, and letter-spacing; most dyslexia research recommends extra line height.
• Focus mode — dims decorative chrome (ads, sparkles, non-interactive icons) so the service list reads like a clean document. Hover to unhide.

All four settings are remembered across visits (localStorage). A small dot on the book icon means you have active non-default preferences.