Getting started

Quickstart

Go from an idea to a running, deployed project. This walks through the core loop once, end to end.

1. Describe what you want to build

Open the app at app.dreambase.devand create a new project. Tell the AI assistant, in plain language, what you are building — “a task tracker with a web app, an API, and a database,” for example. The assistant asks clarifying questions and proposes an initial architecture.

2. Design the architecture

The proposed architecture appears on the design canvas as a set of services connected by data-flow edges. Drag in additional services, remove what you do not need, and configure each one through its details drawer. Some services come from Docker images (databases, queues, caches); others are codebases you are about to build.

Start from a template

The assistant can suggest service definitions and templates from the marketplace, so common pieces — a Postgres database, a Next.js web app — are one click away.

3. Build the codebases

For services that are built from code, Dreambase can drive tools like Claude Code to scaffold and implement them against the design and any Resources you have attached (specs, docs, reference material). The result is a real repository you own.

4. Run it locally

Run the whole project on your machine. Docker-image services start in Docker; codebase services run from their repositories. Make live changes and watch them take effect across the project, just as you would with Docker Compose — but with the design, the assistant, and the logs all in one view.

5. Deploy to the cloud

When it is ready, publish the project to a remote environment. Dreambase hands each service to the right platform service: codebase services go to App Hosting, databases are provisioned by the Database service, and the Monitoring service begins health-checking everything on a schedule.

What happens under the hood

Each deploy is orchestrated by the Dreambase API, which dispatches webhook events to the relevant services and collects status, logs, and outputs back into the app.

You now have the loop

That is the full cycle — describe → design → build → run → deploy. From here, dig into the core concepts or browse the individual platform services.