Tabella

A tabella was ancient Rome's wax writing tablet — the original real-time, rewritable record.

Tabella is an open-source, AI-native mini-CRM: a flexible data model, a 100k-row table that feels instant, live multi-client sync, and an MCP server that lets AI agents like Claude operate on the data — with agent edits visible in the UI in real time.

Status: 🚧 Cycle 3 of 7 complete — the differentiator is banked: Claude operates the live dataset via MCP. See docs/PRD.md and the CHANGELOG.

• Live demo: https://web-production-13ef0a.up.railway.app

• Live API: https://server-production-686b5.up.railway.app/api/objects · health

• Try it: deals filtered + sorted over 100k records — p95 ~50ms deployed, ~5ms local

Quickstart (local)

pnpm install
docker compose up -d db   # local Postgres 16 on :5433
pnpm migrate              # apply migrations (node-pg-migrate)
pnpm dev                  # boots the API server (apps/server) and web app (apps/web)

• API: http://localhost:3001 — try curl http://localhost:3001/api/objects

• Web: http://localhost:5173

Requires Node >= 22, pnpm >= 10, and Docker (for the database).

Related MCP server: Lofty MCP Server

Repository layout

apps/server   Fastify API + WebSocket hub (Node, TypeScript)
apps/web      React web app (Vite, TanStack Query/Virtual)
apps/mcp      MCP server (stdio) — agents operate via the same REST API
packages/shared  Zod schemas + WS message types shared by all three

AI agents via MCP

Tabella ships an MCP server (apps/mcp, stdio transport) with five tools that are thin wrappers over the same REST API the web app uses: list_objects (schema discovery), query_records (filter/sort/cursor, with total for counting questions), get_record, create_record, update_record. Agent mutations go through the exact same validation and (from Cycle 5) fan out over the same WebSocket as human edits.

Point any MCP host — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor — at the deployed API:

// claude_desktop_config.json  (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/ on macOS)
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tabella": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/tabella/apps/mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "TABELLA_API_URL": "https://server-production-686b5.up.railway.app"
      }
    }
  }
}

(Requires a one-time git clone + pnpm install && pnpm build for dist/; the absolute node path matters if you use nvm — hosts don't inherit your shell PATH.)

Then ask Claude things like:

• "How many deals are in Negotiation?" → list_objects → query_records → answers from total

• "Create a deal at Northwind, stage Proposal, value 40k" → a real record, validated against the attribute catalog, visible immediately in the web app

License

MIT