1. a Python package to build virtual graphs connecting all components of your stack (think databases, third-parties, and existing systems)
2. an HTTP/GraphQL query engine built in Rust/Deno that authorizes and optimizes queries over the graphs
3. a CLI to provide a nice developer experience and fast feedback cycle
We developed this platform to tackle some of the challenges we often saw in tech teams we worked with:
- most developers (especially backend) still spend too much time on tasks with no real added value (crud, data validation, compliance, etc.)
- when growing a product, it is difficult keeping up with business needs and remaining agile/innovative with technology (especially when there is limited funding)
We believe it provides multiple advantages over more traditional approaches:
- it offers multiple runtimes [1] with pre-defined operations (e.g. Prisma) and can replace the needs for an ad-hoc backend
- when the project grows, you can easily introduce new APIs or break existing ones in smaller parts while keeping the same interface
- you can write complex business logic directly in Typescript, Python or WebAssembly and run them directly inside the query engine
- most of the frontend are today built on composable components, this brings a similar approach to backend development
- third-parties APIs can be easily integrated, providing you visibility and control over them
- it is interoperable with existing systems, and can be introduced step by step
- it can be easily self-hosted or customized according to your needs
The project is now in public beta, and is run in production by a few companies. We are looking to collect more feedback and early users to help us improve the platform.
For the tech curious reader, we also had to build a few new open source pieces to make this happen:
- a WASI runtime for Python [2] to run Python code inside WASM inside the engine
- a task runner [3] supporting live reload and managing dependencies as DAGs
- a way to inject secrets [4] from your preferred vaults into the engine
[0]: http://metatype.dev [1]: https://metatype.dev/docs/reference/runtimes [2]: https://github.com/metatypedev/python-wasi-reactor [3]: https://github.com/zifeo/whiz [4]: https://github.com/zifeo/lade