menata-app
The runtime application that turns Menata Runtime Metadata into a running application. Define a
data model in YAML — a "Machine" with Fields, Relations, Constraints, Events, Actions and
Permissions — and get a working, server-rendered application: CRUD, table and board views,
workflows, and authorization, with no per-model code required.
This repository starts from the design concepts below (carried over from the private
menata-runtime design-history repository) and builds the real implementation from a clean
slate — no code is ported in from prior prototypes.
Documentation
- getting-started.md — run it locally, define your first Machine.
- writing-guide.md — how to author Machines, Fields, Relations, Constraints,
Events, Actions and Permissions in metadata.
- capabilities.md — what the runtime can actually do right now: field types,
composition primitives, Layouts, and every Machine currently defined.
- ROADMAP.md — what's shipped, in progress, and planned next.
Concepts (read in order)
- 001-design-principles.md
- 002-architecture.md
- 003-runtime-language.md
- 004-runtime-metadata.md
- 005-runtime-lifecycle.md
- 006-runtime-model.md
- 007-composable-runtime-architecture.md
What you can build
This runtime has been used, during development, to build a multi-step document-approval
workflow — sequential or parallel approvers, an approval inbox, SLA tracking, and drag-to-place
PDF e-signatures composited onto the signed document — and a task/project management board with
labels, ordered lists, a calendar, and a sprint dashboard. Both are real applications defined
almost entirely in metadata, not bespoke code, and both remain a work in progress. The design
references are the mockup canvases (see CLAUDE.md).
Tech stack
Go 1.27 + PostgreSQL + templ (server-rendered HTML) + chi + pgx + goose — a single
binary, matching 007-composable-runtime-architecture.md §4.10's "modest-server, server-rendered"
constraint. No client-side framework.
Client-side interactivity is minimized deliberately, in this order of preference:
- HTMX (2.0.4) first — partial page swaps over real HTTP requests, no client state to manage.
- Hyperscript (0.9.93) when HTMX's request/response model genuinely isn't enough (e.g. drag
handles, local UI toggles) — inline, declarative, still no build step.
- Vanilla JS only as a named exception, when neither of the above can express the
interaction (e.g. the signature-coordinate drag editor) — kept small, inline or a single
<script>, no bundler, no framework, and the exception's reason stated in a comment next to
the code.
Both <script> tags load from pageShell (internal/rendering/machine.templ) already.
Naming
menata-app is short for Menata Runtime App — the deployed application produced by running
Menata Runtime, hosted at menata.app. Throughout the concept docs above,
"Menata Runtime" names the engine/system itself (parsing, compiling, executing Runtime Metadata);
"Menata App" names this repository — the product that ships that runtime as a running application.
Relationship to menata-runtime
menata-runtime (private) holds the capability-discovery history that produced these concepts:
seven parallel prototypes, benchmarks, and the capability registry that proved out what a Menata
Runtime needs to support. That discovery phase is closed, and since 2026-10-02 it is a read-only
archive: nothing here depends on it, in code or in citation.
The governance it used to hold now lives here. capability-lifecycle.md (admission test, definition
of done, NFR gates, extension seams) and composable-runtime-architecture-map.md (which document wins
when two overlap) were ported and adapted, not copied — where the original named a mechanism this runtime
lacks, they say so. capabilities.md is the single source of record for what is Built.
A CAP-xx reference anywhere in this repository means precedent, never authority. Those rows record
what menata-runtime decided on its own evidence; a question they settle there is still open here until
this repo's own evidence settles it. One sentence in ROADMAP.md read the other way — that upstream's
registry meant "the work is to implement those capabilities rather than to re-decide them" — and it was
wrong twice: the three behaviours it named were re-decided here, and the registry it deferred to is not in
this tree.
Security
See SECURITY.md to report a vulnerability.
License
MIT
