Manifest VS case-demo-invoicing-app

Manifest is an open source backend as service and alternative to Supabase: https://dev.to/bd_perez/supabase-alternative-for-ai-code-editors-cursor-bolt-lovable-2d16

In this article, I’ll show you how to build a backend in under 5 minutes using Manifest directly from your Cursor IDE.

In this post I compare existing solutions for the backend of AI generated apps and share our journey building Manifest, a minimalistic open source backend for AI-assisted coding.

Good catch! You're absolutely right. We switched from SHA3 to bcrypt a few weeks ago, but forgot to update the docs.

Thanks a lot for pointing it out. I just created an issue to track this, and we’ll fix it shortly: https://github.com/mnfst/manifest/issues/361

Manifest is a minimalist, streamlined Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) designed for speed and simplicity. It lets you define your backend in a single YAML file, instantly getting a REST API, a database, an SDK, and an admin panel.

In this article, I'll show you how to build a complete portfolio with a backend to manage your projects. We'll use bolt for the frontend and Manifest to spin up a backend in seconds. No complexity, no bloat—just a fast, efficient, and streamlined workflow. Your portfolio will be ready to deploy in minutes.

I know that GitHub stars are mostly a vanity metric.

Nevertheless it gives some insight about if people have interest in what you do or not. It also goes together with feedback and exchanges that we collect from users.

Manifest started as an internal project in our digital agency to become an open source product helping developers to build their backends.

I am happy to share our progress today, it is really enjoyable to see a friendly community blossom and see what others are building on top of our product.

I am also surprised by the kindness of people in the open source community: we met many incredibly caring people that helped us and told us tips, their own challenges and their way of thinking.

As of today Manifest (https://github.com/mnfst/manifest) is still in its early days but we would love to see it grow. 1k stars is meaningless, as any number of stars if it doesn't fulfill your objectives. However it gives us strength to continue and think "yeah, there's people out there who care, or are at least curious about what we're doing right now".

Work is never over :)

Me and my buddy are currently struggling in finding a good term to describe our product: is it a micro-backend ? A Headless CMS ? A Backend-as-a-Service ? An API ?

https://manifest.build/ is a really simple 1-file backend to power the API of small to medium websites, apps, directories and so on.

We first presented it as "A complete backend that fits into 1 YAML file" and got some attention. However, it can be deceptive as it does not compare to "real" backend frameworks like Laravel, Django or NestJS. Nor does it compete with backend infrastructure products.

Talking with Manifest users, we found out that many of them were using it as a Headless CMS, so we are currently presenting it as such. However even there we are not 100% satisfied as it differs from the "rich content experience" offered by products like Sanity or Hygraph.

As a developer, how would you call Manifest ?

If you understand that mastering technical debt is key, you will love Manifest ! It is an open source 1-file backend that allows you to create complete backends quickly while keeping your coding conventions and standards.

You can find all that code in the Github repo of this project, Enjoy your coding !