FAQ
Is CephalonEngine production-ready?
Section titled “Is CephalonEngine production-ready?”CephalonEngine is on the 0.1.0-preview track. The core (Cephalon.Engine, Cephalon.Abstractions, Cephalon.AspNetCore, Cephalon.Worker) is at M3 — broad execution, used by sample apps and the playground. Most companion packages are at M2 — narrow execution, single-vertical proofs. See the Maturity audit for the per-package picture.
Practical answer: yes for early adopters who are happy with explicit maturity labels; not yet for risk-averse teams that need a frozen contract.
How does it compare to ASP.NET Core / MediatR / Modular Architecture?
Section titled “How does it compare to ASP.NET Core / MediatR / Modular Architecture?”CephalonEngine sits on top of .NET 10 and ASP.NET Core. It is not a replacement for them — it is a higher-level engine that:
- assumes you’ll compose modules deterministically.
- provides a typed manifest of what’s loaded.
- ships capability contracts (data, eventing, identity, …) so modules stay transport- and provider-neutral.
- provides scaffolding, deploy folders, and operational defaults.
Compared with MediatR: CephalonEngine’s behaviors are typed at the transport level. Compared with hand-rolled modular architectures: CephalonEngine ships the engine you would have had to build anyway.
What about performance?
Section titled “What about performance?”The engine is benchmarked. Hot paths (composition, runtime lifecycle, REST mapping) are gated against regressions of more than ~5%. See Benchmarking.
Is it free?
Section titled “Is it free?”Yes. CephalonEngine is MIT-licensed. See License.
Can I use it for commercial work?
Section titled “Can I use it for commercial work?”Yes. MIT is permissive.
Does it support AOT / trimming / single-file?
Section titled “Does it support AOT / trimming / single-file?”Currently outside the support contract (warn). The intent is to graduate as packages adopt source-generated alternatives. See Compatibility.
Why .NET 10?
Section titled “Why .NET 10?”LTS, mature AppDomain.CurrentDomain and reflection APIs that the manifest model needs, and the configuration features the typed Engine:* schema relies on.
What about .NET 11?
Section titled “What about .NET 11?”Tracked in assessment-only mode. See .NET versions.
How do I get help?
Section titled “How do I get help?”- GitHub Discussions on the repo.
- GitHub Issues for bugs.
- Email the maintainers via the contact info in LICENSE.txt.
How do I contribute?
Section titled “How do I contribute?”Start at Contributing. The PR process is light; the engineering standards are not.
Why “Cephalon”?
Section titled “Why “Cephalon”?”A cephalon is the head — the part of a creature that integrates its senses and coordinates the rest. Felt right for an engine that integrates capabilities and coordinates modules.