DBBasic

⭐ DBBasic Object Server — This Site Runs On It

Live, versioned Python application objects on a single small VM. An object is one Python file — a page, API endpoint, worker, or report — and changes are live on the next request. No build step, no deploy step, no framework treadmill.

Source on GitHub | Learn more

What it does:

✅ Say it, it becomes an app
A schema projects a full app: live tables, kanban boards, forms, filters, comments, file attachments, and record sharing — no per-app code. And when the schema cannot say it, you (or the AI) write a real Python object beside it: same store, same permissions, live on the next request.

✅ Apps as packages
A schema, permission rules, and one page object. Ships with projects, notes, tasks, contacts, articles, links, a calendar, files, and a shell you can talk to.

✅ Data-preserving upgrades
Upgrade a package and your records, customizations, and added schema fields survive. Three-way reconcile instead of silent overwrites.

✅ One permission engine
The same rules enforced across web, API, search, files, and AI agents.

✅ Realtime over websockets
Lists update across open browsers with no reload.

✅ Readable data
TSV records and JSON schemas you can grep, diff, and back up with cp.

✅ Multi-domain hosting
This very site is served by it: pages are records, rendered by two page objects.

Proof: you are reading a page it served. MIT licensed. Python stdlib + uvicorn. A $5–$7 VM is plenty.

⭐ DBBasic Scroll — The Native Console

A native macOS app for operating your object server: browse any collection rendered straight from its schema, install and upgrade packages with provenance ("has this been customized?") and a reconcile inbox, run backups with restore preview, and watch it all update live over the same websocket stream the web uses.

Source on GitHub | Learn more

What it does:

✅ Schema-driven screens
Tables, cards, and feeds generated from the same metadata the web renders. New collection, instant native UI.

✅ Operator console
Package manager, permission policy, ops stream, backups, and the reconcile inbox for upgrade conflicts.

✅ Live
Realtime record updates, notification bell, connection status.

✅ Theme-synced
Reskins itself from the server’s design tokens when you switch themes.

Object Server and Scroll are the flagships. The rest of the workshop ships alongside them — each tool with its own animal:

🆕 Puppet Stage — A Browser Puppet That Reads Stage Direction

A browser puppet with phoneme-accurate lip-sync driven by local text-to-speech, taking stage direction like an actor reading a teleprompter — walk, wave, emote, look around — live or from a screenplay. Characters are plain SVG + JSON, fully swappable without touching code.

Source on GitHub

What it does:

✅ Lip-sync — text → local TTS (say/espeak) → Rhubarb Lip Sync → mouth shapes scheduled on the audio clock.

✅ Screenplay language — plain lines are spoken, [bracketed] lines are stage directions, (parenthesised) prefixes act while speaking. A teleprompter overlay follows along.

✅ Everything is a cue — speech, gestures, movement, and emotes travel one bus; direct it from the UI, the command line, or a script, and every open tab shows the same show.

✅ Zero npm dependencies — one Node server, one static page.

Puppetry is the oldest performing art — five thousand years old, give or take. This just wires it to the newest.

🆕 Porter — Universal Data Converter

Stop wrestling with file formats. Porter converts your data between CSV, TSV, JSON, XML, YAML, TOML, SQL, HTML, Markdown, and more — instantly, on your device.

Download Porter | Pro License — $99/year for teams

What it does:

✅ Convert — Any of 10 formats to any other. Paste, pick, done.

✅ Preview — See your data as a sortable, searchable table. Type-aware: integers, dates, booleans detected and color-coded.

✅ Transform — Rename columns, filter rows, sort, split, merge, reformat dates. Build multi-step pipelines visually.

✅ Recipes — Save your transform pipeline as reusable YAML. Run the same cleanup next month, next quarter, next year.

✅ Quality — Analyze completeness, detect mixed types, find duplicates, validate fields.

✅ Diff — Compare two versions of a dataset. See what was added, removed, or changed.

Who it's for: Freelancers consolidating invoices. Bookkeepers merging bank CSVs. Shop owners syncing product catalogs between Shopify, Amazon, and Etsy. Anyone who has ever said "why can't I just open this file."

macOS 10.15+ | 20MB download | Free. No account required. Your data stays on your device.

🆕 DBBasic Draw for macOS

DBBasic Draw v1.0 - Image editor with AI generation. The $660/year Photoshop alternative.

Download Draw | Pro License — $99/year for teams

Why DBBasic Draw?

✅ AI Image Generation - Generate images from text prompts using OpenAI (Logo, Illustration, Icon, etc.)

✅ Screenshot Tool - Capture screen areas directly into the editor

✅ Full Drawing Tools - Brush, shapes, text, layers, selection

✅ Clipboard Integration - Paste images in, copy canvas out

✅ Undo/Redo - Full history

AI Generation (optional): Works without AI. To enable, click the gear icon and paste your OpenAI API key. Costs ~$0.005 per image. Get a key at platform.openai.com.

macOS 10.15+ | 20MB download | Full details & installation →

🆕 Webmaster — Visual Website Builder

Build and publish websites. You're the webmaster.

Download Webmaster | Pro License — $99/year for teams

What it does:

✅ Visual Editor — Click anywhere and type. Headings, images, links, buttons, forms, tables

✅ Source View — Split view with real-time HTML sync. Learn HTML by watching what your edits produce

✅ Visual CSS Editor — Style with sliders and color pickers. Font, size, spacing, colors, borders, flexbox, grid

✅ Themes & Templates — 8 themes, page templates, full site templates (small business, portfolio, restaurant)

✅ Forms That Work — Contact forms save submissions and email you. No backend code, no third-party service

✅ Deploy Anywhere — Export static HTML or one-click SFTP deploy

✅ Server Extensions — Drop-in PHP: search, hit counter, guestbook, password protection

Who it's for: Small business owners, freelancers, teachers, nonprofits — anyone who needs a website without paying $200/year or learning a framework.

macOS 12+ | 20MB download | Full details & installation →

🆕 DBBasic Shell for macOS

BasicShell v1.0 - A radical reimagining of the terminal, built with Flutter/Dart.

Download Shell | Pro License — $99/year for teams

Why BasicShell?

✅ AI Built In - Type # to control your terminal with natural language

✅ Searchable History - Every command output captured, full-text searchable across all sessions

✅ Secret Redaction - Detects and blocks API keys, tokens, passwords from leaking to AI

✅ Smart Autocomplete - Ghost text suggestions from history + AI fallback

✅ Spatial Workspaces - AI-managed panes, not just tabs

What's Included: - Full xterm-256color emulation with pixel-perfect box drawing - AI agent runtime with tool-calling (open panes, run commands, read files) - Context-aware sidebar with git status, project detection, script runner - Command palette (Cmd+Shift+P) with fuzzy search + AI fallback - Tokyo Night theme, JetBrains Mono bundled

AI Features (optional): BasicShell works without AI. To enable AI commands, create a config file:

mkdir ~/.basicshell
echo "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your-key-here" > ~/.basicshell/.env

Get an API key at console.anthropic.com. Uses Claude Haiku — fast and cheap.

macOS 10.15+ | 20MB download | Full details & installation →

🆕 Free Office Suite for macOS

DBBasic Suite v1.0 - Complete office productivity apps. Free forever.

Download Writer | Download Spreadsheet | Download Slides

Why DBBasic Suite?

✅ Free Forever - No subscription, no registration, no credit card

✅ Portable Files - HTML-based documents work everywhere

✅ No Lock-In - Your data is yours, readable in any browser

✅ Privacy-First - Local storage, no cloud required, no tracking

✅ Lightweight - 20MB per app vs 3GB+ for Office

What's Included: - DBBasic Writer - Word processor with templates, formatting, find/replace - DBBasic Spreadsheet - Formulas (SUM, AVERAGE), calculations, cell editing - DBBasic Slides - Presentations with edit/present modes, PDF export

macOS 10.15+ | 60MB total download | Full details & installation → | License Terms

DBBasic Framework

DBBasic is a radically simple Python web framework that proves modern web development doesn't need 300,000 lines of code—it delivers file-based routing, TSV database storage with ACID transactions, stateless authentication, async job queues, video processing, and deployment tools in under 8,000 total lines by rejecting ORM complexity, embracing plain-text data that you can grep and version with git, and treating Unix philosophy as a feature not a limitation, achieving 5,000+ requests/second on $5 VPS hardware while Django struggles at 50 req/s because sometimes the best way forward is remembering what CGI-bin got right: one file per endpoint, transparent data, three-second deployments via rsync, and the radical idea that you should be able to cat your database and actually understand what you're looking at.

A collection of lightweight Python web framework components. Each module is under 500 lines and uses TSV files for storage.

Core Foundation

dbbasic-tsv ✅

Honey Badger

TSV database with transactions - PyPI | Source - Tab-separated value storage - ACID transactions - SQL-like queries

dbbasic-pipe ✅

Beaver

Unix pipes for data processing - PyPI | Source - Stream processing - Pipeline composition - Memory efficient

dbbasic-web ✅

Coyote

Lightweight web framework - PyPI | Source - Routing and controllers - Template rendering - Request/response handling

dbbasic-content ✅

Packrat

Content management and publishing - PyPI | Source - Markdown content management - Static site generation - Content versioning

dbbasic-video ✅

Dragonfly

Video processing and streaming - PyPI | Source - Video upload and encoding - Streaming support - Thumbnail generation

dbbasic-sessions ✅

Gecko

User session management for authentication - PyPI | Source - Signed cookies, no storage - Stateless authentication - Full Specification

dbbasic-queue ✅

Ant

TSV-based job queue for async tasks - PyPI | Source - Retry logic with exponential backoff - Cron-based workers - Full Specification

dbbasic-logs ✅

Squirrel

Structured logging with rotation - PyPI | Source - TSV format, auto-compression - Searchable with grep/Python API - Full Specification

dbbasic-accounts ✅

Meerkat

Unix-style user management for web apps - PyPI | Source - Mirrors /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group - Dual API (Unix + web-friendly) - Full Specification

dbbasic-email ✅

Pigeon

Unix mail + SMTP delivery - PyPI | Source - Local mail (mbox format) - SMTP queue integration - Full Specification

dbbasic-admin ✅

Octopus

Auto-discovery admin interface - PyPI | Source - Zero-config module discovery - Auto-generated CRUD for TSV tables - Full Specification

dbbasic-rss ✅

Pelican

Simple RSS feed generation - PyPI | Source - Framework-agnostic (Flask, Django, FastAPI) - Works with TSV, CSV, JSON, directories - Standards-compliant RSS 2.0

dbbasic-follows ✅

Starling

Social graph and follow system - PyPI | Source - One-directional follow relationships - Automatic friend detection (mutual follows) - Smart follow/friend suggestions - Built-in admin interface

dbbasic-forms ✅

Spider

Git-native form builder with TSV storage - PyPI | Source - Visual drag-drop form builder - TSV storage for forms and responses - Auto-discovered admin interface - CSV export and analytics - Full Specification

Tools & CLI

dbbasic-cli ✅

Carpenter Bee

Command-line tool for creating and managing apps - PyPI | Source - Standard directory structure - Module command auto-discovery - Full Specification

dbbasic-deploy ✅

Salmon

SSH deployment tool for Ubuntu servers - PyPI | Source - Nginx + Let's Encrypt SSL - systemd service management - Zero-downtime deployments

dbbasic-compiler ✅

Owl

AI compiler that understands English - PyPI | Source - Natural language to code - Powered by Claude Sonnet 4.5 - Zero syntax errors

dbbasic-manx

Owl

BBS/ANSI-style manual page viewer - Source - Zero dependencies (Python stdlib only) - 256-color ANSI output with syntax highlighting - Works with less/pager for keyboard navigation - Full Specification

Desktop Tools

dbbasic-copypaste ✅

Magpie

Clipboard manager with history for macOS - PyPI | Source - Real-time clipboard monitoring - Text and image support - Browse up to 100 previous items - PyQt5 interface

dbbasic-screenshot ✅

Chameleon

Fast screenshot annotation tool for macOS - PyPI | Source - Capture partial screen areas - Draw lines, arrows, rectangles, text - Multiple colors and line widths - Save to file or copy to clipboard

Phase 1: Production Essentials

dbbasic-ratings

User and project reputation system - ~100 lines - Bidirectional ratings tied to projects - Immune to volume/value manipulation - Categorical scoring (quality, communication, timeliness) - Full Specification

dbbasic-jobs

Job board with applications and bidding - ~200 lines - Post jobs, receive applications, award contracts - Simple 4-state workflow (open, in_progress, completed, cancelled) - Budget ranges, skill matching, application proposals - Full Specification

dbbasic-groups

Community organization and access control - ~250 lines - Public, private, and secret groups - Membership management (join, approve, ban) - Owner, admin, member roles - Integrates with forum, jobs, follows - Full Specification

dbbasic-events

Event sourcing and event bus - ~80 lines - Append-only event log, replay state - Full Specification

dbbasic-forum

Discussion boards with flat threading - ~200 lines - Categories, threads, flat posts (Stack Overflow style) - Pinned/locked/solved threads, view counting - AI summaries, solution marking - Grep-able TSV storage - Full Specification

Phase 2: Common Features

dbbasic-api

REST API helpers - ~100 lines - Pagination, filtering, sorting - DRY conveniences

dbbasic-upload

File upload handling - ~200 lines - Storage management - Upload validation

Phase 3: Advanced Features

dbbasic-ai

AI integration (Claude, OpenAI) - ~300 lines - Summarization, moderation - Response caching

dbbasic-channels

WebSocket and SSE support - ~300 lines - Real-time updates - Broadcasting

dbbasic-background

Job orchestration and scheduling - ~200 lines - Scheduled tasks - Retry logic

dbbasic-workflow

State machine workflows - ~400 lines - Multi-step processes - State transitions

Utility Modules

dbbasic-exports

Data export functionality - ~100 lines - CSV, JSON, XML export - Bulk downloads

dbbasic-imports

Data import and ETL - ~150 lines - CSV, JSON parsing - Data validation

dbbasic-backups

Automated backups - ~100 lines - Scheduled backups - Restore functionality

dbbasic-stats

Analytics and metrics - ~100 lines - Usage tracking - Reports

dbbasic-filters

Query helpers and filters - ~50 lines - Common query patterns - SQL shortcuts

Enterprise Features

dbbasic-enterprise

SSO and compliance - Authentication integrations - Audit logging - GDPR tools

dbbasic-subdomains

Multi-tenant support - Subdomain routing - Tenant isolation - Data partitioning

dbbasic-accounting

Financial ledger - Double-entry bookkeeping - Transaction tracking - Reports

Specialized Modules

dbbasic-video

Video processing - Upload and encoding - Streaming support - Thumbnail generation

dbbasic-editor

Rich text editing - WYSIWYG interface - Markdown support - Media embedding

dbbasic-apps

Plugin system - Extension architecture - Plugin management - Hooks and filters

dbbasic-reports

Report generation - Scheduled reports - PDF/Excel output - Dashboards

dbbasic-notifications

Multi-channel notifications - Email, SMS, push - Notification queue - User preferences

dbbasic-personalization

User customization - Themes and preferences - A/B testing - Feature flags

dbbasic-streams

Stream processing - Real-time data streams - Event processing - Aggregations

dbbasic-actors

Actor model concurrency - Message passing - Isolated state - Supervision

dbbasic-scaling

Load balancing and scaling - Request distribution - Session affinity - Auto-scaling

dbbasic-schema_ui

Database schema browser - Visual schema explorer - Relationship viewer - Query builder

dbbasic-public

Static site generation - Markdown to HTML - Asset pipeline - Fast static sites

Design Philosophy

Tiny: Each module under 500 lines Simple: TSV files, no complex dependencies Composable: Mix and match what you need Readable: Code you can understand and modify

Total Framework Size: ~8,000 lines (compare to Django: 300K, Rails: 200K)

Status

Currently in active development. Core modules (tsv, pipe, web) are complete.

Building in order of real-world need, not feature completeness.

Installation

pip install dbbasic_tsv
pip install dbbasic_web
# ... add modules as needed

Or install a bundle:

pip install dbbasic  # Core essentials
pip install dbbasic[full]  # Everything

Contributing

Each module is independently versioned and maintained.

Looking for contributors who value simplicity over features.

Related Projects

dbbasic-examples

Example applications built with DBBasic - GitHub - Blog, microblog, API examples - Module template for new projects - Real-world usage patterns

dbbasic-sound

Synthesized sound effect generator - GitHub - 48+ royalty-free sound effects - Bells, buzzers, notifications, UI sounds - Pure Python, NumPy only

dbbasic-web-native

100+ production-ready UI components in pure HTML/CSS - GitHub - Zero dependencies, no JavaScript required - Copy-paste ready components - Built in 2 days with AI - Replaces Bootstrap (300KB → plain HTML/CSS)

PyStructUI

Transform data structures into beautiful UIs for any Python web framework - GitHub - Data-driven UI rendering - Works with Flask, Django, FastAPI - Separates logic from presentation

AskRobots CommitGen

AI-powered git commit message generation - GitHub - Analyzes git diffs with GPT - Auto-commit with generated messages - AI-powered file modifications

AskRobots Discord

Scalable AI-powered Discord bot - GitHub - GPT-3.5-Turbo and GPT-4 integration - Plugin-oriented architecture - Docker deployment support

Last Updated: April 2026