Contents
- Why Carbon
- Features
- Architecture
- Tech Stack
- Monorepo
- Getting Started
- Local Dev CLI (
crbn) - Environment Variables
- Logging In
- Commands
- API
- Migration Notes
Why Carbon
We built Carbon after years of building end-to-end manufacturing systems with off-the-shelf solutions. We realized that:
- Modern, API-first tooling didn't exist
- Vendor lock-in bordered on extortion
- There is no "perfect ERP" because each company is unique
We built Carbon to solve these problems ☝️
Features
| ERP | Sales, purchasing, inventory, items, accounting |
| MES | Shop floor execution and job operations |
| QMS | Inspections, non-conformances, CAPAs |
| MRP | Material requirements planning |
| Traceability | Full lot and serial tracking |
| Nested BoM | Multi-level bills of material |
| Configurator | Product configuration |
| Capacity Planning | Scheduling against real resource capacity |
| Custom Fields | Extend any record |
| API & Webhooks | Build your own apps on top of Carbon |
| MCP Client/Server | AI-native integration surface |
| Accounting | GL, journals, and third-party sync |
See the full roadmap for what's next (up next: Simulation).
Technical highlights
- Unified auth and permissions across apps
- Full-stack type safety (Database → UI)
- Realtime database subscriptions
- Attribute-based access control (ABAC)
- Role-based access control (Customer, Supplier, Employee)
- Row-level security (RLS)
- Composable user groups
- Dependency graph for operations
- Third-party integrations
Architecture
Carbon is designed to make it easy for you to extend the platform by building your own apps through our API. We provide some examples to get you started in the examples folder.
Tech Stack
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Framework | React Router |
| Language | TypeScript |
| Styling | Tailwind |
| Behavior | Radix UI |
| Database | Supabase (Postgres + RLS) |
| Auth | Supabase |
| Cache | Redis |
| Jobs | Inngest |
| Resend | |
| i18n | Lingui |
| Hosting | Vercel |
| Billing | Stripe |
| Geometry | Rust (FCL collision + OpenCASCADE CAD) |
Monorepo
The monorepo follows the Turborepo convention of grouping packages into two folders:
carbon
├── apps # applications
└── packages # shared code
/apps
| App | Description | How to run |
|---|---|---|
erp |
ERP application | pnpm dev (boots stack + ERP via crbn up picker) |
mes |
MES — shop floor | pnpm dev (select MES in picker, or both) |
academy |
Training | pnpm dev:academy |
starter |
Example app built on the API | pnpm dev:starter |
assembler |
Geometry service (Rust): STEP → GLB + assembly motion planning | spawned by crbn up (needs a release binary — see Optional: assembler) |
pnpm dev runs the per-worktree dev CLI (crbn up). ERP and MES are first-class — the CLI boots the docker stack, applies migrations, regenerates types/swagger, and spawns the selected apps behind portless. The assembler geometry service is spawned too when its release binary is present. Academy and starter are standalone Turborepo entries.
/packages
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
@carbon/database |
Database schema, migrations and types |
@carbon/documents |
Transactional PDFs and email templates |
@carbon/ee |
Integration definitions and configurations |
@carbon/config |
Shared configuration (vitest, tsconfig, tailwind) across apps and packages |
@carbon/jobs |
Background jobs and workers |
@carbon/logger |
Shared logger used across apps |
@carbon/react |
Shared web-based UI components |
@carbon/kv |
Redis cache client |
@carbon/lib |
Third-party client libraries (slack, resend) |
@carbon/stripe |
Stripe integration |
@carbon/utils |
Shared utility functions used across apps and packages |
Getting Started
Prerequisites
- Docker — the monorepo uses Docker for local development
- Node.js v22 (via
nvm) - pnpm (via Corepack — see below; never
npm)
You'll also want accounts with the following external services:
| Service | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Posthog | Product analytics platform |
| Stripe | Payments service |
| Resend | Email service |
Posthog has a free tier which should be plenty to support local development. If you're self hosting and you don't want to use Posthog, it's pretty easy to remove the analytics.
Clone
Clone the repo into a public GitHub repository (or fork https://github.com/crbnos/carbon/fork). If you want to make the repo private, you should acquire a commercial license to comply with the AGPL license.
git clone https://github.com/crbnos/carbon.git
cd carbon
Install
This repo uses pnpm as its package manager. Enable Corepack so the correct pnpm version (pinned via packageManager in package.json) is used automatically:
corepack enable #