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Getting Started

Local development

Run the same Postgres engine on your machine with silos dev and PGLite — no cloud database required.

One of the nicest properties of Silos is that the engine is portable. Because PostgreSQL is compiled to WebAssembly, the same engine that runs in the cloud can run locally — and even in a browser tab — via PGLite. That means you can develop against real Postgres with nothing provisioned remotely.

Start a local server

Run a local Silos development server:

Terminal
silos dev

This starts a local PGLite-backed Postgres that speaks the same wire protocol as a cloud Silos database. Point any Postgres client at the local endpoint it prints and work exactly as you would against the cloud.

silos dev is for local development and prototyping. It runs the same engine, so schemas and queries you build locally carry over to a deployed Silos database without an engine swap.

A typical local-first workflow

Develop locally

Start silos dev, then design your schema and iterate on queries against the local server. No network round-trips, no cloud database to manage.

Create a cloud database

When you're ready to deploy, create a database in the cloud:

Terminal
silos db create my-app

Apply your schema

Connect to the cloud database and run the same schema you built locally — it's the same Postgres engine, so your DDL applies unchanged:

Terminal
silos connect my-app

In-browser PGLite

PGLite also runs entirely client-side in the browser, which is what powers the SQL editor in the Console. You can prototype a schema and run queries in a browser tab with no server at all — the engine is the same WASM PostgreSQL build. See Browser & PGLite for using PGLite directly in your own app.

Next steps

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