What is Foundation

Foundation is the backend your app needs — users, payments, data, AI, integrations — already built and running. You build the part that's actually yours; Foundation handles the hard infrastructure underneath so you never have to.

Skip the infrastructure

Every app needs the same hard, boring groundwork: logging people in, storing data, taking payments, exposing an API, and running it all reliably. It takes months and a team to build — and it's nearly identical every time.

Foundation gives you all of it, ready to go. You don't build auth, a database, billing, or deployment. You turn them on and configure them, and spend your time on what makes your app different.

You bring the app. Foundation brings the backend.

• Your app — the interface your users see and the experience that makes it yours. Build your own UI, or start from ours.
• Foundation's backend — users, payments, data, files, AI, integrations, and an API — configured, not coded, and wired together for you.

Your frontend talks to that backend through a connector and SDK Foundation provides: login, data, payments, and integrations are already there. You write what's unique to your app, not the plumbing.

Building an API service or an MCP server with no UI at all? That works too — skip the frontend and just use the endpoints.

You decide. Your agent builds.

You don't have to write the frontend by hand, either:

• You're the director. You decide what your app should do and how it should feel. You don't need to know how the backend pieces fit together — Foundation does, and these docs hand that knowledge to your agent.
• Your agent is the builder. An AI agent — our wizard, Claude Desktop, or your own — configures the backend and builds your app against it, using the SDK and components Foundation provides.

You bring the idea. Foundation brings the backend. Your agent does the assembly.

Turn on only what you need

The backend is modular — every app starts simple and adds capabilities:

Capability	What it gives your app
Users & accounts	Login, registration, profiles
Payments	Subscriptions and plans (via Stripe billing)
Data	Your own database, files, and storage
AI	Prompts and actions wired to your data
Integrations	Connect outside services — Stripe, Slack, Google, and more
API & MCP server	Your app can be used by other apps and AI agents

Not every app needs all of these. An API service might skip users entirely; a membership site leans on users and payments. You choose.

Two jobs: configure, then build

1. Configure — set up the backend: what your app does, who can use it, what it charges. No code — done in the dashboard, by talking to the wizard, or through Claude.
2. Build — build your app's experience on top of it: your UI (or ours), wired to the backend with Foundation's SDK and components.

The rest of these docs follow that split. The Configure section covers setting things up; the Build section covers making the app.

Three ways to do it

You're never locked into one way to work:

• Dashboard — click through and configure visually.
• Wizard — describe what you want in plain language; our AI configures it.
• Claude Desktop / MCP — do everything through conversation. No UI needed.

See Three ways to build & manage for how each works, or jump to the Quickstart.