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/TS config files and Codabra compiles them into real, framework-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 — pluggable code generators per framework (Next.js today, more planned)
• 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 (Docusaurus)
│   └── web/           # Example generated app (Next.js)
├── packages/
│   ├── cli/           # CLI tool (codabra, create-codabra)
│   ├── core/          # Config loader, parser, validator, compiler
│   └── providers/     # Framework providers (Next.js, ...)
└── config/            # Example configuration files

Config System

Place your config files in /config:

config/
├── models/        # Data models (entities)
├── routes/        # API + page routes
└── views/         # Declarative UI definitions

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 — Config loading, parsing, validation, compilation (no framework coupling)
• providers — Framework-specific code generators (Next.js, future: Remix, Nuxt…)
• cli — Orchestrates everything; exposes the codabra and create-codabra commands

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.