Platform overview

Monark is a business-application platform: one TypeScript codebase that gives an organization identity, permissions, its own databases, automations and communications, with end-user apps such as Kanban and Wiki on top. The idea that makes the rest make sense: a small core supplies every shared capability, and extended modules add business features by registering with core at boot, never by changing it.

One deployment, one organization

Monark is single-tenant. A deployment serves exactly one organization. The API creates that organization at first boot from the INITIAL_ORG_* environment variables (or pnpm provision:org creates it on demand), and every user who signs up or signs in joins it automatically. There is no in-app setup wizard and no organization switcher.

To serve several businesses, run several independent instances, each with its own database, domain and branding. The same API image runs every instance; only its environment differs. See Serve one organization per deployment for why multi-tenancy was removed.

Core and extended

Every feature lives in its own workspace package, and modules.manifest.ts assigns each one a tier.

Core modules ship with every deployment and may depend on each other. Removing one breaks the app.
Extended modules are business features. They may depend on core, never on another extended module, so any one of them can be removed without touching the others.

Whether a feature is core or extended is an engineering fact. Readers find Kanban next to Data in these docs, not in a separate "modules" area. The full list is in Modules; how the tiers are enforced is in Architecture.

The map

Core subsystems:

Subsystem	What it does	Read more
Architecture	Module tiers, boundaries, the event bus, codegen, boot sequence, the web app shell	Architecture
Users and authentication	Accounts, sign-in, two-factor, trusted devices, organization membership	Users and authentication
Permissions	Roles, granular permissions, and per-record restrictions	Permissions
Data models and queries	Admin-defined databases (models, fields, records) and the query language that filters them	Data models and queries
Automations	Event-triggered flows built as node graphs and run by a durable worker	Automations
Notifications	In-app and email messages, with per-user preferences	Notifications
Identity and integration	Webhooks, API keys, service accounts, and the public REST API	Identity and integration
Secrets	A write-only, encrypted store for the credentials integrations use	Secrets
Chat agent	The in-app assistant, which acts through the same routes as the public API	Chat agent
Block editor	The block-based document editor shared by wiki pages, cards and document fields	Block editor
Files	Signed uploads to private storage, used by file fields	Files
Feature flags	Runtime switches resolved per user, role, organization or globally	Feature flags
Global search	One command palette that searches every module that registers a source	The extensibility contract
Branding	The app name, colours, logo and sender address, set per deployment	Rebrand an instance

Extended modules:

Module	What it does	Read more
Kanban	Boards, columns and cards	Use Monark
Calendar	Calendars, events, reminders, and events generated from data models	Use Monark
Wiki	A tree of nested pages	Use Monark
Achievements	Badges awarded automatically when events happen	Achievements
GitHub, Telegram, Discord, X (Twitter)	Connect a third-party service to automations	Integration modules

The pieces that run

Two thin services compose the modules into a running app, and neither holds business logic:

services/web is the Next.js frontend. It imports each module's client and contract code.
services/api is the Express and tRPC backend. It imports each module's server and contract code, registers every module at boot, starts the background workers, and serves the public REST API under /api/v1.

PostgreSQL holds the data and Supabase provides sign-in sessions and file storage. The full list of technologies is in Tech stack.

Limits