Contents
Why Carbon
Manufacturing teams often run planning, production, quality and accounting in separate systems. That creates predictable problems:
- BOMs and revisions are re-keyed between engineering and production
- Material shortages surface after work has started
- Job costs and quality records are reconstructed after the fact
- Integrations depend on vendor-specific tools and consultants
Carbon puts ERP, MRP, MES and QMS in one Postgres database you can inspect, own and extend. Engineering, planning, production, quality and accounting update the same data, without synchronization jobs between separate product databases.
Carbon is an open-source alternative to NetSuite, Epicor, SAP Business One, Plex, Odoo and ERPNext. It supports complex assembly, contract manufacturing, configure-to-order and high-mix, low-volume production. See all comparisons.
Features
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| ERP — Inventory & Costing | Quotes, orders, purchasing, inventory, invoicing and actual job costs |
| MRP — Planning | Demand, supply planning, versioned BOMs and routings, finite-capacity scheduling |
| MES — Execution | Digital travelers, operator terminals, 3D instructions, barcode and labor capture |
| QMS — Quality | Inspections, FAI, nonconformance, CAPA, calibration and risk management |
| Traceability | Forward and backward lot and serial genealogy |
| Engineering | Multi-level BOMs, revisions, change orders, supersession and product configuration |
| Accounting | General ledger, journals, multi-entity, multi-currency and accounting integrations |
| Workflows | Rule-based automation with triggers, actions and run history |
| Maintenance & Assets | Scheduled maintenance, fixed assets and kanban replenishment |
| API, Webhooks & MCP | Typed REST operations, event-driven webhooks and a permission-aware MCP server |
| Custom Fields | Extend records without changing the core schema |
| Integrations | Onshape, SolidWorks, Paperless Parts, Linear, Jira, Slack, Ramp, Stripe and Zebra |
See the full roadmap for what's next.
Technical highlights
- Generated types shared by the database, application and API
- Postgres row-level security and tenant-scoped records
- Role- and attribute-based access for employees, customers and suppliers
- Realtime database subscriptions
- Shared identity and permissions across the application, API and MCP server
- Explicit dependency graphs for manufacturing operations
- Rust geometry services for STEP conversion and assembly motion planning
Get Carbon
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| Carbon Cloud | Managed application, database, updates and backups. Start a 30-day trial without a sales call. |
| Self-hosted | Run Carbon in your VPC, on-prem or air-gapped. See the self-hosting guide. |
| Develop locally | Run the application and supporting services from source. Follow Local Development. |
API & MCP
The Carbon API exposes the same manufacturing operations used by the application. Each operation validates its input, updates dependent records and enforces the authenticated identity's permissions. Operations are available through two interfaces with the same arguments:
- HTTP:
POST https://app.carbon.ms/api/v1/{module}/{operation}, with a published OpenAPI spec for generating a typed client in any language
- MCP: as tools for hosted or local AI agents, scoped to the permissions of the API key or signed-in user
Create a key under Settings → API Keys, then:
curl -X POST https://app.carbon.ms/api/v1/sales/getSalesOrders \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $CARBON_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "args": { "limit": 10 } }'
Self-hosted deployments serve the same API at /api/v1. The Data API provides direct access to permitted tables and views when an operation is not available in the service layer.
API keys and MCP are included with Business and Enterprise plans. Using them in a self-hosted deployment requires a commercial license.
Architecture
ERP and MES are React Router apps over a single Postgres database. Permissions (row-level security), computed totals and change events live in the database itself; background work runs through Inngest, which calls back into the ERP to execute jobs. The architecture guide follows one click all the way down.
Building E2E Systems
Carbon is intended to be the core of a bespoke end-to-end manufacturing system. We provide an apps/starter and allow you to build a custom sales and shop-floor engine with Carbon at the center.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
