Create your own project

Create a fresh TanStack Start project (Vite-based) with Bun as the runtime. Raw source exports require a TypeScript-capable bundler — Vite handles this out of the box.

bun add @tikab-interactive/toolkit
bun add drizzle-orm pg zod better-auth @tanstack/react-table lucide-react

The Toolkit declares infrastructure clients as regular dependencies and the shared-by-host libraries (React, Drizzle, the router) as peers, so your app controls the versions and nothing is bundled twice.

Compose your database schema

The foundation fragment (auth tables, mailbox, audit log, runtime config) comes from the Toolkit. Your domain tables live in your repo, referencing the foundation — never the other way around:

// db/schema/index.ts — your composition point
export * from "@tikab-interactive/toolkit/db/foundation";
export * from "./app"; // your domain: customers, orders, whatever you build

// db/schema/app.ts — your fragment
import { pgTable, integer, text, timestamp } from "drizzle-orm/pg-core";
import { user } from "@tikab-interactive/toolkit/db/foundation";
 
export const order = pgTable("order", {
  id: integer("id").primaryKey().generatedAlwaysAsIdentity(),
  createdById: text("created_by_id").references(() => user.id),
  createdAt: timestamp("created_at").notNull().defaultNow(),
});

Point drizzle.config.ts at your composition file and generate your first migration — it will cover the foundation and your tables in one 0000_*.sql:

bun run drizzle-kit generate
bun run drizzle-kit migrate

Two thin routes wire the Toolkit into your app — copy them from the example as reference implementations:

• src/routes/api/auth/$.ts — hands /api/auth/* to Better Auth.
• src/routes/api.files.ts — serves stored objects through getObject (pairs with fileUrl() from the storage block).

Set the required environment: DATABASE_URL, BETTER_AUTH_SECRET, BETTER_AUTH_URL. Password-reset emails already flow through the mailer — they land in the outbox until you configure SMTP_*.

Copy example/docker-compose.yml as your starting point: Postgres, MinIO (with the bucket-creating init job), optionally Hatchet for jobs and pgweb (--profile tools) as the database browser. Every service is self-hosted — nothing phones home.

These are deliberately app code, not packages — they carry your branding, your i18n, your routes. Take them from the example and make them yours:

• Login / signup / forgot-password / reset-password routes (the auth UI building blocks live in the ui package; the routes are thin).
• The /admin area — compose AdminShell, DataTable, SelectionBar, EditSheet from the admin-ui block against your server functions (see The admin area for the shape).
• The /sandbox harness skeleton + its guard (open in dev, site-admin-only in production).

• Sandbox-first for every new building block.
• The gates: typecheck, lint (oxlint), fmt (oxfmt), and two e2e tiers (journey + building-block specs).