How a 12-Container Docker Stack Was Trimmed to 4 Running Services

A developer attempted to reduce a self-hosted project's 12-container Docker stack to make it more accessible to new users who often abandon setup at the first command. By analyzing health checks and service dependencies rather than relying solely on deployment documentation, the developer identified which services were hard requirements versus optional components. Testing revealed two initial code-reading assumptions were wrong — notably, that MinIO could be replaced by local filesystem storage, which failed in the published image. After removing Milvus, etcd, Vault, Redis, the ingestion worker, and folding the outbox dispatcher into the API process, the stack was reduced to four persistently running containers: postgres, minio, api, and web. The exercise highlighted that health check code reflects actual runtime behavior more reliably than deployment guides, which document intent rather than real dependencies.