github.com/get-convex/chef @prompts-v0.0.1 sqlite

Chef is the only AI app builder that knows backend. It builds full-stack web apps with a built-in database, zero config auth, file uploads, real-time UIs, and background workflows.

Chef's capabilities are enabled by being built on top of Convex, the open-source reactive database designed to make life easy for web app developers.

Development of the Chef is led by the Convex team. We welcome bug fixes and love receiving feedback.

This project was made in collaboration with the Bolt team and is a fork of the stable branch of bolt.diy.

Getting Started

Visit our documentation to learn more about Chef and check out our prompting guide.

The easiest way to build with Chef is through our hosted webapp, which includes a generous free tier. If you want to run Chef locally, you can follow the guide below.

Running Locally

Note: This will use our control plane to provision Convex projects. However, Chef tokens used in this enviroment will not count towards usage in your Convex account.

1. Set up local environment

Run the following commands in your terminal:

nvm install
nvm use
npm install -g pnpm
pnpm i
echo 'VITE_CONVEX_URL=placeholder' >> .env.local
npx convex dev --once # follow the steps to create a convex project in your team

2. Set up Chef OAuth application

Go to the Convex dashboard and create an OAuth application. Redirect URIs will not matter for Chef, but you can set one to http://127.0.0.1:5173 (or whatever port you’ll run the Chef UI on) so that the form can be submitted. To develop using Chef locally, your OAuth app will need to be verified by the Convex team. Contact a Convex team member or click the “Request Verification” menu option to continue.

3. Set up Convex deployment

Open the Convex dashboard and go to Settings → Environment Variables. Then, set the following environment variables:

BIG_BRAIN_HOST=https://api.convex.dev
CONVEX_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID=<value from oauth setup>
CONVEX_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET=<value from oauth setup>

4. Add API keys for model providers

Add any of the following API keys in order to enable code generation:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=<your api key>
GOOGLE_API_KEY=<your api key>
OPENAI_API_KEY=<your api key>
XAI_API_KEY=<your api key>

Note: you can also add your own API keys through the settings page.

4. Run Chef backend and frontend

Run the following commands in your terminal:

pnpm i
pnpm run dev

## in another terminal
npx convex dev

Congratulations, you now have Chef running locally! You can log in to Chef with your existing Convex account.

Repository Layout

• app/ contains all of the client side code and some serverless APIs.

• components/ defines the UI components

• lib/ contains client-side logic for syncing local state with the server

• routes/ defines some client and server routes

• chef-agent/ handles the agentic loop by injecting system prompts, defining tools, and calling out to model providers.

• chefshot/ defines a CLI interface for interacting with the Chef webapp.

• convex/ contains the database that stores chats and user metadata.

• template/ contains the template that we use to start all Chef projects.

• test-kitchen/ contains a test harness for the Chef agent loop.