Butterbase

Butterbase gives you the building blocks for AI-driven applications without lock-in: a Postgres-backed backend with row-level security, serverless functions, an LLM gateway, realtime subscriptions, key-value store, file storage, RAG, durable per-key actors, and a built-in Model Context Protocol (MCP) server so agents can operate your backend with tools instead of glue code.

• Open source, Apache 2.0. The full runtime data plane is in this repo — no feature-gated "community edition".
• Self-host in one command. docker compose -f docker-compose.local.yml up -d brings up the whole stack on your machine or your cloud; see Quickstart (self-host) and SETUP.md.
• Real Postgres underneath. Every app gets its own Postgres database with declarative schema, migrations, row-level security, and auto-generated REST. No proprietary datastore, no lock-in.
• Or use the managed cloud. butterbase.ai runs the same data plane multi-region, with a free tier to start.

Features

Data

• Postgres data plane — per-app databases with declarative schema (/schema), automatic REST endpoints (/auto-api), and migrations.
• Row-Level Security — first-class RLS policy management with user-isolation helpers (/rls).
• Key-Value store — regional, quota-protected KV with TTL, audit trail, and dashboard expose rules (/v1/:app/kv/*). New in v0.2.0.
• File storage — S3/R2-backed object storage with presigned URLs, ACLs, and async indexing (/storage).

Compute

• Serverless functions — TypeScript functions executed on the Deno runtime (/functions).
• Durable Objects — stateful per-key actors for chat rooms, multiplayer, rate limiters, long-running agents (/durable-objects).
• Realtime — WebSocket subscriptions to table changes for live UIs and presence (/realtime).
• Edge SSR — deploy Next.js / Remix / Astro edge handlers from source (/edge-ssr, /edge-ssr-from-source).
• Frontend hosting — zip or build-from-source static / SPA deploys with custom domains (/frontend, /custom-domains).

AI

• Agents — declarative multi-step LLM workflows (graph specs) with checkpointed runs, function/MCP tools, and human-approval pauses, executed by agent-runtime (/agents; examples in Examples/agents/).
• AI gateway — single endpoint for chat, embeddings, model listing; pluggable router adapters (/gateway, /ai-config).
• RAG — managed collections, document ingestion, semantic search and synthesized answers (/rag).
• Integrations — third-party tool access via Composio (/integrations).

Identity & ops

• Auth — email + OAuth (Google, GitHub, Apple, X, …), JWT tuning, post-login hooks, service keys (/auth, /oauth-config, /api-keys).
• Audit logs — structured request audit trail across KV and other surfaces (/audit-logs).
• Webhooks — outbound webhooks for app events (/webhooks).
• Multi-region app moves — relocate an app across regions with retained source replicas (butterbase apps move; see docs/move-app.md).

Agent surface

• MCP server — every capability above is exposed as MCP tools at /mcp (HTTP) or via stdio (@butterbase/mcp — npx @butterbase/mcp).
• Claude Code plugin — packages/plugin (submodule of butterbase-skills) ships 39 guided skills and 34 slash commands (idea → plan → schema → auth → functions → deploy → submit) for agentic app building.

Templates

templates/ contains full, production-shaped applications built on Butterbase. These aren't starter skeletons — each one is a complete, running app with schema, RLS policies, deployed functions, auth config, and a React frontend. You clone the backend into your own Butterbase account and own a working product from day one.

How cloning works: butterbase clone <app_id> <name> is a managed-platform operation — it forks the live backend (schema, RLS, functions, auth/storage/realtime/AI configs) into a new app_<id> you own, with its own database, URL, and API key. The butterbase clone path requires an account at butterbase.ai. If you're self-hosting, the backend/ folder in each template contains the schema, RLS policies, and function code you would deploy manually against your own stack.

butterbaseCRM

An open-source CRM for founders. Companies, people, deals (kanban), meetings, notes, and an activity feed — with Gmail and Google Calendar sync, company and person enrichment, email campaigns, multi-platform social publishing (X, LinkedIn, Reddit, TikTok), and a workspace AI agent that can query your CRM and propose actions for you to approve.

Core CRM entities are stored as substrate entities — a cross-app, agent-readable memory layer — so other Butterbase apps you build (like butterSupport) share the same customer identity without any integration code between them.

What's included: 29 Postgres tables · 56 serverless functions · Workspace AI agent (agent-chat) · Gmail + Calendar ingest via Composio · Enrichment (People Data Labs + Exa) · Social publishing via Composio · Realtime on 17 tables · Google OAuth + email auth · RLS on every table

butterbase clone app_44zjayftl7b3 butterbaseCRM
cd butterbaseCRM
cp frontend/.env.example frontend/.env.local   # fill in your APP_ID
cd frontend && npm install && npm run dev

Full setup: templates/butterbaseCRM/QUICKSTART.md

butterSupport

An AI support agent that diagnoses against your real product data, not just your help-center docs. A per-ticket Durable Object agent loop reads live customer state from substrate (failed payments, auth errors, account tier), drafts a reply, and posts it for founder approval before anything reaches the customer. Ships with an embeddable widget and a founder console (inbox, live reasoning stream, approval flow).

It works in two depths from the same clone:

• Commodity tier — paste a help-center URL, get a working agent in under 60 seconds. No product integration required.
• Deep tier — link your main product app so the agent reads live substrate signals and can propose governed actions (resend verification, retry webhook, flag bug, apply credit).

What's included: 20 Postgres tables · 30 serverless functions · 2 Durable Objects (SupportTicketDO, WidgetTicketDO) · RAG collection over your help center · Embeddable widget (53KB gzipped) · HMAC-signed user identity · Founder approval on every customer-visible reply · Escalation to Slack or Gmail via Composio

butterbase clone app_0ycj4ad7odud my-support
cd my-support

Visit your new subdomain, sign in with magic link, paste your help-center URL. Copy the embed snippet into your product HTML.

Full setup: templates/butterSupport/README.md

Open-source vs. managed

This repo ships the runtime data plane — everything required to self-host a fully featured Butterbase instance. The managed offering at butterbase.ai adds multi-region orchestration, billing, upstream AI router adapters, lease-based quota enforcement, and ops dashboards (those live in a private repo that consumes this one as a submodule).

When you self-host, the AI gateway runs without upstream router adapters, billing uses a no-op provider, and quotas are unlimited. Wire your own implementations via the BillingProvider, QuotaEnforcer, and RouterAdapter interfaces in packages/shared.

Quickstart (self-host)

Requirements: Docker, Node 22+, npm.

1. Clone (with submodules)

The Claude Code plugin containing skills (packages/plugin) is a git submodule (butterbase-skills). A plain clone leaves packages/plugin/ empty and npm install silently skips that workspace.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/butterbase-ai/butterbase.git
cd butterbase

If you already cloned without submodules:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Optional — keep submodules updated on every pull:

git config --global submodule.recurse true

2. Install dependencies and configure env

npm ci
cp .env.example .env

docker-compose.local.yml sets KV_REDIS_URL_US_EAST_1 for you. Edit .env only if you override defaults (e.g. run control-api on the host — use redis://localhost:6379).

3. Start the stack

First run builds images and can take several minutes.

docker compose -f docker-compose.local.yml up -d

Wait until control-api is healthy:

curl -sf http://localhost:4000/health/ready

4. Run database migrations

Schema is not applied automatically on container start. From the repo root (with the stack running):

export NEON_PLATFORM_PRIMARY_URL=postgresql://butterbase:butterbase_dev@localhost:5433/butterbase_control
export NEON_RUNTIME_PROJECT_ID_US_EAST_1=postgresql://butterbase:butterbase_dev@localhost:5437/butterbase_runtime_us
export BUTTERBASE_REGIONS=us-east-1

npm run migrate:all

5. Seed the local dev user

With AUTH_ENABLED=false, the API uses DEV_OWNER_ID from compose. That user must exist in platform_users (fresh volumes start empty):

export NEON_PLATFORM_PRIMARY_URL=postgresql://butterbase:butterbase_dev@localhost:5433/butterbase_control
npm run seed:dev

6. Smoke test

Auth is disabled in the local compose profile (AUTH_ENABLED=false):

curl -X POST http://localhost:4000/init \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "my-app"}'

curl http://localhost:4000/apps

Local endpoints

Full setup (auth, MCP clients, troubleshooting, production notes): SETUP.md.

Architecture

              ┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
              │    Your app · agent · MCP client · CLI   │
              └──────────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                                     │  REST · WebSocket · MCP
              ┌──────────────────────▼───────────────────┐
              │            control-api (Fastify)         │
              │   apps · auth · schema · auto-api · RLS  │
              │   storage · functions · KV · realtime    │
              │   AI gateway · RAG · DOs · MCP at /mcp   │
              └──┬──────┬───────┬───────┬────────┬───────┘
                 │      │       │       │        │
        ┌────────▼─┐ ┌──▼───┐ ┌─▼──┐ ┌──▼─────┐ ┌▼─────────────┐
        │ Postgres │ │ S3 / │ │Redis│ │ Deno   │ │ Python agent │
        │ 3 planes │ │ R2   │ │ KV  │ │runtime │ │   runtime    │
        └──────────┘ └──────┘ └────┘ └────────┘ └──────────────┘
                                              ┌──────────────────┐
                                              │ Cloudflare:      │
                                              │ build-runner ·   │
                                              │ dispatch-worker  │
                                              └──────────────────┘

Three Postgres planes:

• control-plane (db/control-plane/) — platform metadata: users, apps, billing, audit.
• runtime-plane (db/runtime-plane/) — hot-path runtime tables (KV expose rules, realtime channels, sessions).
• data-plane (db/data-plane/) — per-app user data; each app gets isolated schemas with RLS.

Repo layout

Services (services/)

Packages (packages/)

Other top-level pieces

• dispatch-worker/ — Cloudflare Worker that routes per-app subdomain traffic.
• bb-placeholder/ — placeholder origin for unprovisioned subdomains.
• infra/ — pgbouncer and traefik configs for self-host.
• db/ — SQL migrations for the three Postgres planes.
• Examples/ — todo-2026-04-02, grocery-list-2026-04-03, agents/.
• templates/ — full production-shaped apps: butterSupport, butterbaseCRM.

What's not in this repo

The OSS / managed boundary is intentional. The following are private to the managed offering:

• Multi-region orchestration and the cross-region scheduler.
• Billing logic, lease-based quota math, and Stripe wire-up beyond the no-op provider.
• Upstream AI router adapters (OpenAI / Anthropic / Bedrock provider integrations beyond the gateway interface).
• Customer / admin dashboards, hackathon-host dashboards, and ops tooling.

If you need these for self-host, implement against the interfaces in packages/shared — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the scope rules.

Documentation

• SETUP.md — self-host and local development guide
• CHANGELOG.md — release notes (latest: v0.3.0, 2026-06-08 — Agents)
• ROADMAP.md — what's next
• CONTRIBUTING.md — contributor workflow and OSS scope
• docs/move-app.md — multi-region app moves
• Examples/ — small example apps (todo, grocery list)
• templates/ — full apps you can clone and run (butterSupport, butterbaseCRM)
• Docs site (local): http://localhost:4321 after docker compose up

Project status

Latest release: v0.3.0 (2026-06-08) — adds Agents (graph-spec LLM workflows, function-as-agent-tool, multi-trigger functions); v0.2.0 added the KV store across SDK / REST / CLI / MCP. The data plane is production-tested by the managed offering; the OSS distribution is young — please file self-host issues and we'll tighten docs and defaults from feedback. See CHANGELOG.md for the full history.

Community & support

• Discord — chat with the team and other builders
• LinkedIn — follow us for product updates and announcements
• GitHub Issues — bug reports, feature requests
• Email — yuki@butterbase.ai for direct contact

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. The boundary between OSS and the managed offering is intentional — please read the scope section before opening a PR that touches billing, quota math, or upstream router adapters.

Security

See SECURITY.md. Report vulnerabilities to security@butterbase.ai.

License

Apache-2.0. Copyright 2026 NetGPT Inc.

Contributors