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Manifest Documentation 👋

Introduction​

Manifest is a backend designed for developers using AI coding tools like Cursor, Copilot or Windsurf.

If you’ve been using AI tools to build your app or website, you already know the truth: Generating a frontend is easy, but building the backend is still a mess.

With Manifest, you define your entire backend in a single YAML file. It can be generated and edited by both humans and LLMs.

Key advantages:

  • 🤖 Fits naturally into AI-assisted coding
  • 🔒 Easy to edit, validate and version.
  • 🗄️ Data, logic, storage, essentials features and an admin panel
  • 🧠 Reduce LLM token usage by up to 90%

Install Manifest​

Follow the steps below to install Manifest in your local machine.

Prerequisites​

Installation steps​

Run this command to create a Manifest project ready to use with Cursor IDE.

yarn create manifest my-project --cursor

This will create a my-project folder with a Manifest backend configured for Cursor.

You can replace --cursor with another option if you're using a different AI tool;

  • --copilot if you're using GitHub Copilot
  • --windsurf for Windsurf
  • or remove it entirely if you're not using any AI coding tool
note

You can also use npm create instead of yarn create.

To start the Manifest backend, run the following command in the new project folder:

cd my-project
npm run manifest

You can now:
- See your Admin panel at http://localhost:1111 using the email admin@manifest.build and the password admin
- Use your REST API at http://localhost:1111/api

tip

If you already have a frontend app, you can run the npx add-manifest command from your project root to include it in your repo.

Note with PNMP​

As PNPM blocks postinstall scripts, we have to adapt the þackage.json. Add this to your package.json file before doing pnpm install:

  "pnpm": {
    "onlyBuiltDependencies": [
      "@nestjs/core",
      "sharp",
      "sqlite3"
    ]
  }