Sounds like something Dokku's official K3S scheduler meant to solve:

- https://dokku.com/docs/deployment/schedulers/k3s

- https://dokku.com/tutorials/other/deploying-to-k3s

Author here!

I built a bash script to manage deployments of multiple applications to a single Dokku server. I made this after I was paying like 30$+ a month on DigitalOcean, and wanted to move fast to a different VPS

What it does:

  - Import existing servers - Run ./deploy.sh --import ./apps --ssh your-server to clone all your apps, export their config (domains, ports, storage, postgres, letsencrypt), and env vars

  - Migrate between servers - Import from old server, change SSH config, deploy to new server

  - Multi-app orchestration - One config.json manages multiple independent repos

  - Hierarchical configuration - Parent settings cascade to deployments, children can override

  - Smart deploys - Skips unchanged apps by comparing git commits

  - Tag-based filtering - --tag staging or --tag api to deploy subsets

  - Secrets via .env files - Hierarchical: _api (shared) → api.example.com (specific)

Pure bash, requires only jq. No daemon, no external services.