Dinghy: Unifying DevOps Tooling with a Single CLI and Docker Engine

Introduction to Dinghy: a Swiss-army knife for everyday engineering

Dinghy is an open-source toolchain designed to unify disparate engineering workflows like infrastructure, documentation, and diagrams under a single CLI. It utilizes a Docker-based engine to ensure every team member operates with identical versions of Deno, Node, and OpenTofu.

Why This Matters

Engineering teams often struggle with toolchain drift where local environments, CI/CD pipelines, and documentation systems fall out of sync due to conflicting dependency versions. Dinghy addresses this by pinning all dependencies—from Terraform providers to site builders—within a single versioned Docker engine image, eliminating the common ‘it works on my laptop’ syndrome and preventing dependency rot in aging projects.

Key Insights

• 248 lines of Terraform generated from 8 lines of source, 2026
• Diagram as Code using TSX components for draw.io rendering
• Docusaurus site builder used by engineers for S3 deployment
• RevealJS used by Dinghy for YAML-based slide decks with Prezi-style zoom
• Docker-based engine used by DevOps teams to pin Deno and OpenTofu versions

Working Examples

Installation command for the Dinghy CLI

curl -fsSL https://get.dinghy.dev/install.sh | sh

Pinning the engine version in the .dinghyrc file

DINGHY_ENGINE_VERSION=0.1...

Practical Applications

• Use case: DevOps teams deploy documentation sites to S3 using Docusaurus with live-preview. Pitfall: Manual Node version management leads to environment drift.
• Use case: Engineers author architecture diagrams as TSX components for draw.io. Pitfall: Using GUI editors causes diagrams to drift out of sync with infrastructure.
• Use case: Developers generate OpenTofu infrastructure from React TSX. Pitfall: Dependency rot in two-year-old projects without pinned Docker engine versions.

References:

• https://dev.to/mrduguo/introduction-to-dinghy-a-swiss-army-knife-for-everyday-engineering-20l2
• https://get.dinghy.dev/install.sh
• https://dinghy.dev