August 2026: osls v4 and zero-downtime assets

osls v4

We created osls  v3 as a fork of the original Serverless Framework (the serverless CLI) to keep it open-source and free. osls v4 is a smooth update:

• internally upgrades from AWS SDK v2 (outdated) to v3
• hardened (fewer dependencies, stricter options)
• supports SSO

It’s actively maintained, off the deprecated SDK, with a tighter dependency tree. This massive upgrade has been carried mostly by Graham Campbell  💙

Most apps should just work. v4 reworks the internals so some unmaintained plugins may break. Lift is already compatible. If you hit a plugin that still needs it, Robert Slootjes published a shim: github.com/slootjes/osls-aws-provider-request-shim 

Try it in one repo with: npx osls@4 deploy

Upgrade guide: github.com/oss-serverless/osls/blob/4.x/docs/guides/upgrading-to-v4.md 

Zero-downtime deploys for website assets

Bref has always done zero-downtime for the backend. This is the same idea for assets where CSS/JS with a hash could 404 for a few seconds on deploy (e.g. Laravel with Inertia).

Add versionedAssets: true on the Lift website construct and new hashed files are uploaded to S3 before the PHP code switches. Obsolete files are also now deleted after 24h instead of immediately, which avoids breaking opened websites.

This is enabled by default when setting up Bref in new Laravel apps. For existing apps, add the line in serverless.yml:

constructs:
    website:
        type: server-side-website
        versionedAssets: true
        assets:
            '/build/*': public/build
            '/favicon.ico': public/favicon.ico
            '/robots.txt': public/robots.txt

Docs: bref.sh/docs/use-cases/websites

Public files on S3

Storing public files on S3 (e.g. avatars) is now easier: add publicPath: public and every file in the public/ subdirectory will be public. The rest stays private.

Docs for Laravel: bref.sh/docs/laravel/file-storage#public-files

Laravel 13 fonts

Laravel 13 adds fonts-manifest.json (and font CSS that PHP reads). I updated the default serverless.yml stub for new apps. Existing apps don’t get that fix automatically.

Add these two lines under package.patterns:

- 'public/build/fonts-manifest.json'
- 'public/build/assets/fonts-*.css'

Also shipped

• Optional iconv-extra layer if you need legacy encodings (Windows-1250, SQL Server varchar). The slim AL2023 runtime dropped those. Attach ${bref-extra:iconv-extra-php-83} (or your PHP version) and set GCONV_PATH=/opt/lib/gconv.
• Relay (Redis client) extra is available for Bref v3, PHP 8.2–8.5 including ARM64.
• ssh2, pcov, and New Relic on PHP 8.5.
• Symfony 8.1: upgrade bref/symfony-bridge to 3.0.1 or the cache dir 500s (/var/task/var/cache/prod).
• bref.sh is now on Nextra v4 (up from v2). Nothing visible should change. It was a long upgrade with a few failed attempts, the kind of invisible work that has to happen eventually. Glad it’s done because a lot of tokens and brain cells were burned doing this.

What’s new with Bref Cloud

Free plan

The free plan is open again, for non-commercial projects. If you were already on it, nothing changed for you. I had closed it to new signups while I ironed Cloud out with a smaller audience (free users can mean a lot of support). Things are running smoothly now, so I’m happy to open it again. Bref has always been friendly to side projects and solo creators (like me). I want Cloud to stay that way.

Serverless databases

You can now create serverless databases in Bref Cloud (finally). They’re Aurora Serverless v2 (MySQL or PostgreSQL): they scale up instantly, scale down on their own, and can pause when idle. You pay for compute when it’s running, and only storage when it’s paused. Waking up is usually about 12 seconds.

Auto-pause is the cheapest option for rarely used environments. If the app is always active and doesn’t need scaling, a small regular DB is still cheaper (around $12/mo vs $43/mo for always-on serverless that never pauses).

Tracing

Bref Cloud tracing got a lot better. We now support AWS Transaction Search. If you already use X-Ray, it’s a one-click switch in the AWS console. You get 30 days of traces instead of 6 hours, and you can filter by route, job, command, or cold starts. I recommend switching.

How to enable it: bref.sh/xray/docs#enabling-aws-transaction-search

Dashboard

The dashboard now sorts apps by invocations, with new apps pinned at the top.

Changelog (and RSS): bref.cloud/changelog 

One last teaser: I’m seriously looking into self-hosted Bref Cloud. This would be for larger teams that need complete control on “who accesses our AWS accounts”. If this is you, get in touch :)