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Cratebase

Starter kits

The fastest way to start a new app on Cratebase isn’t an empty cratebase dev and a blank frontend — it’s create-cratebase, a scaffolding CLI that gives you a small, production-shaped, typed-end-to-end app with auth, a realtime dashboard, and a Cratebase server ready to run, in one command.

Terminal window
bun create cratebase my-app
# or: npm create cratebase@latest my-app
# or: pnpm create cratebase my-app

Answer three prompts (template, package manager, whether to install dependencies and run git init) — or skip all of them non-interactively:

Terminal window
bun create cratebase my-app --template nextjs --pm bun --yes

Then:

Terminal window
cd my-app
bun run dev

dev runs cratebase dev (the local server: superuser, schema, seed data, generated types, hot-reloading hooks — see First run) and the frontend’s own dev server side by side. Sign in with the seeded demo account, or create a new one — either way you’re looking at real auth, a realtime list, file upload, and search wired up to a real Cratebase instance within a minute of running the first command.

Templates

Section titled “Templates”
nextjs vite-react expo
Stack Next.js (App Router), TypeScript, Tailwind Vite, React, TypeScript, Tailwind Expo Router, TypeScript
Auth Password, email OTP, magic link, OAuth, TOTP Password, email OTP, magic link, OAuth, TOTP Password, email OTP
Realtime list ✅ useRecords(..., { realtime: true }) ✅ ✅
Create/update/delete ✅ useMutation ✅ Add/delete
File upload ✅ useUpload ✅ not included — same API, see the template’s README
Full-text search ✅ ✅ not included — same API, see the template’s README
Notifications bell ✅ useNotifications ✅ not included — same API, see the template’s README
Rendering SSR-safe CratebaseProvider boundary Client-only SPA Native + web (SPA export)

nextjs and vite-react ship the full feature set: password/OTP/magic-link sign-in with OAuth buttons (rendered only for providers you’ve actually configured) and TOTP challenge handling, a protected dashboard with a realtime list, create/update/delete, cover-image upload, a search box, and a notifications bell. expo is kept deliberately lean — password and email-code sign-in plus a realtime list — since OAuth, magic links, and TOTP all need a bit of native wiring (deep linking, a QR-rendering library) that doesn’t belong in a starter; its README shows exactly how to add each one with the same @cratebase/client calls the web templates use.

Every template ships with:

  • schema.json — a small posts collection (title + content, both searchable; an optional cover file field; an owner relation), scoped with owner = @request.auth.id rules — see Schema as code.
  • pb_seed/ — a demo user (demo@example.com / password123) and a couple of seeded notes, applied once on an empty database — see Seeding data.
  • pb_hooks/welcome.pb.js — emails the built-in welcome email template to every new signup via $mails.send.
  • .env.example, a dev script that runs cratebase dev and the frontend together (and prints the one-line install command if the cratebase binary isn’t on your PATH yet), and a README with its own 60-second quickstart and deploy notes.

The CLI itself

Section titled “The CLI itself”

create-cratebase has no runtime dependency beyond @clack/prompts — it copies a template, substitutes your project name, and optionally installs dependencies and runs git init. Every flag also works non-interactively, which is what a CI job scaffolding a template for a build check (like Cratebase’s own) uses:

Usage:
  bun create cratebase <project-directory> [options]


Options:
  -t, --template <name>   nextjs, vite-react, expo
      --pm <name>         bun, npm, pnpm, yarn
  -y, --yes               Skip prompts, accept defaults for anything unset
      --no-install        Skip installing dependencies
      --no-git            Skip `git init`

Works with Bun, npm, pnpm, or Yarn, and requires only Node ≥ 18.