Manifest VS Svelte

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.

I primarily work on Windows, though I also use Linux, so I needed a cross-platform solution. I chose Electron for its flexibility and paired it with Svelte, TailwindCSS, and Vite-Electron. Vite made dev setup fast and clean, which I really appreciated.

a svelte5 spa

Svelte continues to earn a reputation as the joy-to-work-with framework due to its lightweight nature, elegant syntax, and compile-time reactivity. It is often used for side projects, hobby apps, and small websites, but Svelte isn’t just for passion projects.

tools: sveltekit, pocketbase, postmark, groq, docker, cloudflare, cloudflared.

The first time I visited https://svelte.dev , the non-flat-vector banner instantly won me. It just stands out from the world around it. I just sort of assumed the engineering was superior to the competition if they were going to lead with crimped metal (and was right).

Flat design has always struck me as an extremist response to an issue. Windows Vista required everyone to be on the same page design-language wise in order to look good, but can the same be said of Windows XP? You can make just a few parts of your app drop-shadowed, you can add some slight reflection gradients while keeping the whole thing matte, you do not need to get rid of all visual depth just to avoid the feeling of zeerust.

Svelte as the main framework. (Whimsy is my first Svelte project, actually! And Svelte didn't disappoint. Almost.)

We're going to build our Svelte application using the Svelte REPL sandbox (or just REPL) at svelte.dev. I recommend checking out all the great documentation at svelte.dev, like its Examples section showcasing Svelte's many features, as well as the cool interactive tutorial at learn.svelte.dev.

Svelte super clean frontend structure

In theory, “de-frameworking yourself” is cool, but in practice, it’ll just lead to you building what effectively is your own ad hoc less battle-tested, probably less secure, and likely less performant de facto framework.

I’m not convinced it’s worth it.

If you want something à la KISS[0][0], just use Svelte/SvelteKit[1][1].

Nowadays, the primary exception I see to my point here is if your goal is to better understand what’s going on under the hood of many libraries and frameworks.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

[1]: https://svelte.dev

When I teased this series on LinkedIn, one comment quipped that Vue’s been around since 2014—“you should’ve learned it by now!”—and they’re not wrong. The JS ecosystem churns out UI libraries like Svelte, Solid, RxJS, and more, each pushing reactivity forward. React’s ubiquity made it my go-to for stability and career momentum. Now I’m ready to revisit new patterns and sharpen my tool-belt.