Clank

Clank is a dependency-free, AI-first full-stack TypeScript framework and open-source deployment platform. It combines fine-grained reactivity, direct DOM rendering, SSR with node-preserving hydration, inference-first server functions, built-in auth, user-owned SQLite documents, live queries, deterministic artifacts, database migrations, and atomic deployment.

“AI-first” does not mean putting a chat box on every page. In Clank, the same application has two first-class interfaces:

• Humans receive accessible HTML, responsive state, forms, navigation, and Tailwind styling.
• Agents receive named actions with JSON Schema, explicit side-effect and confirmation metadata, and a compact semantic view of the interactive UI.

The framework itself has no dependencies, dev dependencies, peer dependencies, virtual DOM, runtime compiler, or bundler. Clank's build-time TSX compiler is included; Node 22.16+ supplies the final TypeScript-to-JavaScript transform and consistent built-in SQLite backups.

#What works

#Run it

npm run check
npm run dev

Open http://127.0.0.1:4173. npm only runs scripts here; package.json installs nothing.

The development server also exposes several complete application shapes:

• /examples/commerce/index.html: catalog, filtering, cart dialog, and checkout form.
• /examples/dashboard/index.html: responsive SaaS admin, tabs, tables, pagination, invitations, and settings.
• /examples/booking/index.html: multi-step dates, room selection, guest details, pricing, and confirmation.
• /examples/todo/index.html: the smallest focused keyed CRUD example.

Run the SSR + SQLite + live-sync example separately:

npm run dev:fullstack

Open http://127.0.0.1:4180 in two tabs. A committed mutation in either tab streams a new query snapshot to both. The first response already contains the todo HTML; the client hydrates those exact nodes.

Run the auth-first reference app:

npm run dev:auth

Open http://127.0.0.1:4181, create an account, and sign into that account from a second browser. Registration, secure sessions, a synchronized profile, create/rename/complete/remove todo operations, per-user data isolation, SSR, Tailwind, and live synchronization are already wired. The complete source and Tailscale instructions are in examples/auth-todo.

Create and deploy a new authenticated app:

npm run dev:platform
# Create an account at http://127.0.0.1:4200

clank login --server=http://127.0.0.1:4200
clank create my-app
cd my-app
npm install
clank doctor
clank deploy

The generated app installs only Clank, which has no transitive dependencies, and includes README.md plus an agent-ready AGENTS.md. Before publishing Clank to npm, use --framework=local to install from the current checkout. The first deploy creates and links the site automatically. The CLI builds locally without a shell, vendors the exact Clank runtime, verifies every path and SHA-256 digest, applies ordered SQLite migrations behind a backup, health-checks the candidate, and restores the previous release automatically on failure. clank deploy --dry-run performs the complete local artifact check without login or network access.

The smallest application is:

import { computed, render, signal } from "./dist/index.js";

const count = signal(0);
const label = computed(() => `Count: ${count.value}`);

function App() {
  return (
    <button
      class="rounded-full bg-slate-900 px-4 py-2 text-white"
      onClick={() => count.value++}
      agentId="increment"
      agentLabel="Increase count"
    >
      {label.value}
    </button>
  );
}

render(document.querySelector("#app")!, <App />);

#Documentation

• Documentation website — searchable, responsive, and available as Markdown, JSON, llms.txt, and a complete agent corpus
• Documentation site source
• Getting started
• Reactivity
• Rendering and components
• Forms
• Headless UI behavior
• Performance model
• AI-first contracts
• AI application blueprints
• Authentication, MFA, passkeys, and recovery
• Organizations, RBAC, invitations, and scoped tokens
• Service drivers for files, email, jobs, and webhooks
• Structured logs, traces, metrics, and health
• Encrypted backups and disaster recovery
• Durable distributed deployment and agent fencing
• Managed ingress, custom domains, and external PostgreSQL
• ASVS-oriented security verification
• Threat model
• Chaos and failure testing
• Public beta readiness
• Application recipes for humans and agents
• Packaged-release conformance
• Code and product audit
• Maintenance and release certification
• Release process
• Authentication
• Security and deployment
• Deployment platform
• Deployment dashboard, quotas, metrics, and custom domains
• Deployment CLI
• Renaming from Proact
• SQLite migrations
• Database revisions and correctness
• Platform security
• Self-hosting
• Railway production deployment
• Routing
• Server primitives
• Full-stack SSR, SQLite, and live sync
• Tailwind CSS
• Architecture
• API reference

#Design principles

1. Inference should flow from runtime contracts. Declare a validator once; TypeScript derives documents, IDs, function inputs, outputs, and clients while agents receive the equivalent JSON Schema.
2. Fine-grained updates beat tree rerenders. Components establish bindings once; signals update only the dependent region or property.
3. The platform is the dependency. Clank uses DOM, Fetch, URL, AbortController, Proxy, Web History, and Node primitives directly.
4. Simple code should stay simple. A component is a function, state is an object with .value, and UI is ordinary HTML structure.
5. Dangerous behavior must be legible. Actions declare side effects, confirmation expectations, validation, and authorization at their boundary.
6. Private data should be private by construction. Auth-required functions and owned tables make the safe path the short path.
7. Deployment should be a verifiable transaction. Build inputs, artifact contents, migration history, activation, failure recovery, and rollback are explicit and auditable.

Clank is MIT licensed.

The official npm package is clank.run; the installed executables are clank and clank-platform. The unrelated unscoped clank package on npm is not this framework.