A point-by-point look at KiCI — typed-TypeScript pipelines that run on your own infrastructure — versus CircleCI’s YAML pipelines on its cloud compute (or self-hosted runners).
Pipelines are real, typed TypeScript — loops, conditionals, functions, autocomplete
Pipelines are configured in a .circleci/config.yml YAML file in the repository
Source code and secrets
Your source and secrets stay on your own sovereign infrastructure; KiCI’s hosted control plane never receives them
Secrets are stored in CircleCI — keys are kept in the CircleCI web app, in project settings or a context, not in your repo
Self-hosting model
You self-host the whole execution environment — orchestrator and agents — on your own infrastructure, while KiCI runs the control plane as a managed service
Jobs run on CircleCI’s cloud compute by default; self-hosted runners let you run jobs on your own infrastructure instead
Autoscaling ephemeral agents
A built-in auto-scaler provisions ephemeral agents on demand across Docker/Podman containers, bare-metal processes, and Firecracker microVMs — on your own infrastructure, with no extra controller
Self-hosted autoscaling relies on Kubernetes — the container runner spins up more pods as work queues — or on cloud autoscaling groups you set up
Cost model
The hosted control plane is free with full functionality; paid tiers raise limits for scale and observability and never meter your executions — you provide the execution compute itself
CircleCI cloud compute is metered — each resource class has a credits-per-minute price; self-hosted runners shift that cost to your own infrastructure
Development experience
Testing & local dev loop
kici run --local and kici run remote run a full workflow from your current codebase — locally or against the real remote pipeline — including unstaged changes, with no commit or push
The CLI can run a single job locally with Docker, but not full workflows — broader runs go through CircleCI
Dynamic job generation
Generate jobs programmatically in-process — a dynamicJob generator emits typed job definitions in TypeScript, fanning out one job per item an upstream job discovers
Dynamic configuration uses a setup workflow — a setup config generates and continues the rest of the pipeline configuration at runtime
KiCI