diff --git a/Dockerfile b/Dockerfile
index 61c7427..1ba668e 100644
--- a/Dockerfile
+++ b/Dockerfile
@@ -26,7 +26,3 @@ COPY . /app/
 
 # Expose port 5000 for the Flask app to listen on when running within the container
 EXPOSE 5000
-
-# Define the command to start the container. Use gunicorn as the WSGI server to serve the Flask app
-# CMD ["gunicorn", "--bind", "0.0.0.0:5000", "app:app"]
-CMD ["python", "app.py"]
diff --git a/app.py b/app.py
index 32a0726..df0da57 100644
--- a/app.py
+++ b/app.py
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@
 import json
 import subprocess
 import semantic_version
+import argparse
 
 app = Flask(__name__)
 
@@ -70,7 +71,7 @@ def get_chain_watch_env_var():
     return chain_watch
 
 
-CHAIN_WATCH = get_chain_watch_env_var()
+CHAIN_WATCH = []
 
 
 # Clone the repo
@@ -750,6 +751,7 @@ def start_update_data_thread():
     update_thread = threading.Thread(target=update_data)
     update_thread.daemon = True
     update_thread.start()
+    return update_thread
 
 
 @app.route("/healthz")
@@ -786,7 +788,57 @@ def get_testnet_data():
     )
 
 
-if __name__ == "__main__":
+def get_app_args():
+    # setup the application args, providing 3 different commands that run the application in different modes
+    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description="Cosmos upgrade monitor")
+
+    app_role_subparsers = parser.add_subparsers(title='subcommands',
+        description='valid app roles to run',
+        help='runs the application in various configurations', dest='command')
+
+    # debug mode runs the application as a development server, with the cache setup as a simple in Python cache
+    app_role_subparsers.add_parser('debug')
+    # reader mode runs the application as a production Flask server, with the cache setup as an external store that is read from
+    reader_parser = app_role_subparsers.add_parser('reader')
+    # writer mode runs the application as a datastore writer, with the cache setup as an external store that is written to
+    writer_parser = app_role_subparsers.add_parser('writer')
+
+    # add the filesystem cache location arg to reader and writer parsers
+    reader_parser.add_argument('--cache-location', dest='cache_location', default='/tmp/cosmos_upgrade_monitor_cache')
+    writer_parser.add_argument('--cache-location', dest='cache_location', default='/tmp/cosmos_upgrade_monitor_cache')
+
+    return parser.parse_args()
+
+# Acts as a factory, returning the flask app with the cache configured as FSCache
+# Can be called by gunicorn like so:
+# gunicorn -b 0.0.0.0 -w 4 'app:get_production_flask_app("/tmp/cosmos_upgrade_monitor_cache")'
+def get_production_flask_app(cache_location):
+    global cache
+    cache = Cache(app, config={"CACHE_TYPE": "FileSystemCache", "CACHE_DIR": cache_location})
+    return app
+
+# Acts as a factory, returning the flask app with the cache configured as Simple
+def get_debug_flask_app():
+    global cache
+    cache = Cache(app, config={"CACHE_TYPE": "SimpleCache"})
     app.debug = True
-    start_update_data_thread()
-    app.run(host="0.0.0.0", use_reloader=False)
+    return app
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    args = get_app_args()
+    if args.command == "debug":
+        CHAIN_WATCH = get_chain_watch_env_var()
+        print("Running in debug mode")
+        start_update_data_thread()
+        debug_app = get_debug_flask_app()
+        app.run(host="0.0.0.0", use_reloader=False)
+    elif args.command == "reader":
+        print("Running Flask application with FSCache")
+        app = get_production_flask_app(args.cache_location)
+        app.run()
+    elif args.command == "writer":
+        cache = Cache(app, config={"CACHE_TYPE": "FileSystemCache", "CACHE_DIR": args.cache_location})
+        CHAIN_WATCH = get_chain_watch_env_var()
+        print("Running as writer")
+        thread = start_update_data_thread()
+        thread.join()
diff --git a/docker-compose.yaml b/docker-compose.yaml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba2c655
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docker-compose.yaml
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+services:
+  reader:
+    build:
+      context: .
+    ports:
+      - "5000:5000"
+    volumes:
+      - cache-volume:/var/lib/cache
+    command: ["gunicorn", "--bind", "0.0.0.0:5000", "-w", "4", "app:get_production_flask_app(\"/var/lib/cache\")"]
+  writer:
+    build:
+      context: .
+    volumes:
+      - cache-volume:/var/lib/cache
+    command: ["python", "app.py", "writer", "--cache-location", "/var/lib/cache"]
+
+volumes:
+  cache-volume:
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 3853af5..9f49bed 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -4,3 +4,4 @@ requests==2.26.0
 urllib3==1.26.7
 gunicorn==20.1.0
 semantic-version==2.10.0
+Werkzeug==2.2.2