diff --git a/docs/operators/handbook.md b/docs/operators/handbook.md
index 532f58f..897312e 100644
--- a/docs/operators/handbook.md
+++ b/docs/operators/handbook.md
@@ -370,3 +370,20 @@ If you get errors about database access:
 ```
 abra app run foo.bar.com db bash -c 'mysqldump -u root -p"$(cat /run/secrets/db_oot_password)" <database>' | gzip > ~/.abra/backups/foo.bar.com_db_`date +%F`.sql.gz
 ```
+
+## Can I deploy a recipe without `abra`?
+
+Yes! It's a design goal to keep the recipes not dependent on `abra` or any
+single tool that we develop. This means the configurationc commons can still be
+useful beyond this project. You can deploy a recipe with standard commands like
+so:
+
+```
+set -a
+source example.com.env
+cd ~/.abra/recipes/myrecipe
+docker stack deploy -c compose.yml example_com
+```
+
+`abra` makes all of this more cenvenient but other tooling could follow this
+approach.