controversial but docker compose is for development and demos. for prod give me a binary, a config file / systemd unit file, and tell me how to configure external dependencies and let me decide how to manage them.

and if you're serious, k8s config. otherwise don't waste my time.

Waste your time? You know what would waste my time? Building out my own deployment of Redis/Postgres, all the dependencies, systemd services, ML server, and backup solutions (yes, the compose takes regular DB backups for you) and then keeping it all updated manually, just to host photos on my local network for my family of 4. Do you think making your life needlessly difficult is a feature? Then read the docs and deploy to a K8s cluster. Nothing is preventing you from doing that.

But this is for running on an old PC in your closet next to your router. Not serving 40k concurrent users. I would not even consider trying to scale it past a dozen family members. And anytime I run an upgrade or config change I just do it in prod.

You can get all that information from a compose file.