What is Tikab's Toolkit?
Tikab's Toolkit is our foundation stack — the things every product needs (database, auth, files, email, background jobs, AI, audit, runtime config, an admin) built as small, reusable building blocks on top of TanStack Start. The whole point of this repository is to show that a foundation can be assembled from packages that each stand on their own.
Two things live here, and the distinction matters everywhere in these docs:
| What it is | Where | |
|---|---|---|
| The Toolkit | The reusable foundation: fourteen packages with no app-specific assumptions. This is what future projects consume. | packages/ |
| The example app | One consumer of the Toolkit — a project tool with workspaces, projects and tasks. It exists to prove the blocks compose, and to serve as reference code. | example/ |
When you build your own product on the stack, you take the Toolkit and replace the example — see Create your own project.
The map
One architectural fact drives most of the differences from a classic React + API-server setup: the frontend and the backend are the same application. A server function is a typed function that happens to run on the server — no separate API service, no CORS, no hand-written client types.
The repository
- — the Toolkit
- db/— Drizzle client + schema fragments (foundation / app)
- auth/— Better Auth config, session choke point
- storage/— MinIO / Azure Blob behind one API
- mailer/— outbox-always email
- jobs/— Hatchet wiring
- ai/— env-driven LLM adapter factory
- audit/— change history
- config/— runtime settings
- admin-ui/— Django-style admin building blocks
- ui/— component primitives
- env/,ldap/, edge-sso/, api/ — supporting blocks
- — one consumer of the Toolkit
- src/routes/— file-based routes (app, /admin, /sandbox)
- src/lib/— server functions (domain logic)
- e2e/— journey tests + building-block tests
- docs/— this site
Reading order
- Getting started — run the example locally.
- Coming from Django — the translation table.
- The building blocks — each package, with live code excerpts.
- Create your own project — consume the Toolkit without the example.
- Sandbox-first — the working rule for new blocks.
- For AI agents — the contract for agents working in the repo.