DBBasic

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⭐ 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: - ✅ 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 — lists update across open browsers over websockets, 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.

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⭐ 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.

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🆕 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.

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🆕 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.

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🆕 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 →

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🆕 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 →

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🆕 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 →

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🆕 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

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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.

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Core Foundation

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Tools & CLI

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Desktop Tools

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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Status

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

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

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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

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Contributing

Each module is independently versioned and maintained.

Looking for contributors who value simplicity over features.

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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

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Last Updated: April 2026