What is Codabra?

Codabra is a configuration-driven application generator. Instead of hand-writing boilerplate for models, routes, and views, you describe your app in JSON config files and Codabra compiles them into real, target-native code:

• Generate models, routes, and views from declarative config
• Validate config files before generating anything
• Dev — generate + start your app's dev server in one command
• Build — generate + run your app's production build
• Providers — Next.js, Node/Express, PHP, Go and Symfony from the same config
• Feature kits — reusable auth, admin and comments domain building blocks
• Database lifecycle — push, generate, and migrate your schema

Quick Start

npx create-codabra@latest my-app
cd my-app
pnpm install
pnpm codabra dev

Monorepo Structure

codabra/
├── apps/
│   ├── docs/          # Documentation (VitePress)
│   └── web/           # Example generated app (Next.js)
├── packages/
│   ├── cli/           # CLI tool (codabra, create-codabra)
│   ├── core/          # Config loader, parser, validator, compiler
│   └── providers/     # Language and framework renderers
└── config/            # Example configuration files

Config System

Place your config files in /config:

config/
├── models/        # Data models (entities)
├── routes/        # HTTP routes
├── views/         # Declarative UI definitions
├── functions/     # Reusable application logic
├── events/        # Lifecycle hooks
└── voters/        # Authorization rules

CLI Commands

codabra generate       # Generate app from config
codabra validate       # Validate config files
codabra dev            # Generate + start dev server
codabra build          # Generate + production build
codabra upgrade        # Upgrade @ndnci/codabra and regenerate app files
codabra add-provider   # Add a new provider to an existing project
codabra db push        # Push schema directly to the database (dev)
codabra db generate    # Generate versioned migration files
codabra db migrate     # Apply pending migrations
codabra create [name]  # Scaffold a new Codabra project

| Command | Description | | ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------ | | codabra generate (g) | Generate application files from your config | | codabra validate (v) | Validate config files without generating | | codabra dev | Generate + start the development server | | codabra build | Generate + run the production build | | codabra upgrade | Upgrade the CLI and regenerate application files | | codabra add-provider | Add a new provider to an existing project | | codabra db push | Push the schema directly to the database | | codabra db generate | Generate versioned migration files | | codabra db migrate | Apply pending migration files | | codabra create [name] | Scaffold a new Codabra project |

Architecture

• core — validation and config → canonical application model compilation
• providers — target renderers; syntax changes here, business meaning does not
• cli — Orchestrates everything; exposes the codabra and create-codabra commands

The generation path is config → canonical model → target renderer → files. This avoids translating source code between languages and keeps route/model semantics shared.

Only @ndnci/codabra (the CLI) is published to npm — core and providers are bundled into it at build time.

License

Codabra is source-available under the Elastic License 2.0.