DBBasic

★ Star on GitHub Read the docs · How it works

Start here: the track

Fifteen steps on one $7 VM, each needing the one before it. The first four are up; the rest follow weekly. Every step ends the same way: still one VM, still this month’s bill.

Then why it is built this way, where code goes when you need it, and the quickstart.

⭐ 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

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

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

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

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 about 15,000 lines across sixteen core modules, twelve of them under 1,000 lines each, 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. Most modules are under 1,000 lines; the largest, dbbasic-tsv, is about 3,400. All use 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