You describe tables, access rules and hooks in Dart. The zonai binary compiles them and serves
an HTTP API over SQLite: CRUD, live queries (/db/stream*, client.db.listen), auth, and a
dashboard at /_.
What you need
- Dart SDK 3.13.x on
PATH. The SDK has to match the one the release was built with, and
zonai compile/build refuse to run on a mismatch.
- The
zonai binary from GitHub Releases. It
is not a pub.dev package. Builds exist for macOS and Linux (arm64, x64) and Windows (x64).
- In your app:
zonai_schema (the server project's only
dependency, added for you) and, optionally, zonai_client
for Dart/Flutter apps that call the server.
Run it
mkdir my_app && cd my_app
curl -fsSL https://github.com/mrgnhnt96/zonai/releases/latest/download/zonai -o zonai && chmod +x zonai
./zonai dev # asks to initialize, scaffolds the project, serves http://localhost:8080
On Windows, download zonai-windows-x64.zip from the same release instead.
Then, for each table you add:
- A schema in
lib/src/schemas/.
- A table-rules file and a row-rules file in
lib/src/rules/. Without rules, only admins get
access.
./zonai db migrate generate --name <name> (the server applies pending migrations when it starts).
Create a dashboard admin with ./zonai db admin add --email <email> --password <password> and open
http://localhost:8080/_.
To ship: ./zonai build --release writes build/. On the server, run
cd build && ./zonai serve --release --host 0.0.0.0. No Dart SDK is needed there.
The quick start walks through all of this with
code. Everything else is at https://docs.zonai.dev.
For AI agents
- Read https://docs.zonai.dev/llms.txt first. It starts with the minimum steps to run zonai
and the facts agents most often get wrong.
- Inside a project,
./zonai ai claude (or cursor, copilot, windsurf, cline) writes
project-local reference sheets.
- Live UI: use
/db/stream* or client.db.listen. Don't poll.
This repository
This is the zonai monorepo: the CLI and runtime, the server, the dashboard, the docs site and the
published packages. To work on zonai itself, start with CONTRIBUTING.md.
