Installation

Choose whether your application owns the file or connects to a server.

Embedded Go

Inside a Go module:

go get github.com/crapthings/meldbase@latest

The module targets Go 1.23 or later. Continue with the complete Go example; no database service is required. Pin a release in go.mod when reproducible builds matter.

CLI and server

On macOS, install the released CLI with Homebrew:

brew tap crapthings/tap
brew trust --tap crapthings/tap
brew install crapthings/tap/meldbase
meld version
meld --help

The Homebrew package is named meldbase; the installed command is meld.

Install from source

With Go installed:

go install github.com/crapthings/meldbase/cmd/meld@latest
meld --help

Ensure your Go binary directory is on PATH. Alternatively, download the CLI for your operating system from GitHub Releases.

For a local browser or Node.js experiment:

meld serve --db /tmp/meldbase-tour.meld --addr 127.0.0.1:8080 --dev-no-auth

Keep this development server local. An externally reachable service requires an authentication and collection-policy configuration; inspect meld serve --help and the server configuration in the repository before deploying it.

TypeScript SDK beta

Install the packages your application needs:

npm install @meldbase/client@beta
npm install @meldbase/react@beta react
npm install @meldbase/worker@beta

All three packages are published as 0.1.0-beta.2. Pin that exact version for reproducible builds. Node.js 20 or later is required for Node applications. See SDK compatibility and release status for the beta API policy.

Continue with the Browser guide or Node.js guide. For a complete npm-installed React application with local JWT authentication, use the React starter.

Run the repository example

To explore the public browser example, use the repository workspace:

git clone https://github.com/crapthings/meldbase.git
cd meldbase
corepack enable
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm --filter @meldbase/client build

The repository uses pnpm 10.34.5. Node.js 20 or later is required for the Node client. The browser example runs directly from this checkout:

pnpm --filter @meldbase/example-realtime-todos dev

Start the server in another terminal and follow the Browser guide. For a runnable Node script using the published SDK, follow Node.js.

Next step

For a coding assistant integrating Meldbase into another project, start with the LLM documentation index. It links to Markdown guides generated from the same source as this website.

Learn the document model, then query your collection.