Carbon

Build hardware at the speed of software

Carbon combines ERP, MRP, MES and QMS.
Plan materials, run the shop floor, manage quality and track actual costs in one system.

Hard tech unicorns build on Carbon.

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One record from quote to cash. Link quotes, orders, jobs and invoices.

Generate configurations from rules. Control BOMs, routings and revisions.

Trace every unit to its source. Follow lot and serial genealogy in both directions.

Contents

• Why Carbon
• Features
• Get Carbon
• API & MCP
• Architecture
• Tech Stack
• Monorepo
• Local Development
• Commands
• Security
• Contributing
• License

Why Carbon

Manufacturing teams often run planning, production, quality and accounting in separate systems. That creates predictable problems:

• BOMs and revisions are re-keyed between engineering and production
• Material shortages surface after work has started
• Job costs and quality records are reconstructed after the fact
• Integrations depend on vendor-specific tools and consultants

Carbon puts ERP, MRP, MES and QMS in one Postgres database you can inspect, own and extend. Engineering, planning, production, quality and accounting update the same data, without synchronization jobs between separate product databases.

Carbon is an open-source alternative to NetSuite, Epicor, SAP Business One, Plex, Odoo and ERPNext. It supports complex assembly, contract manufacturing, configure-to-order and high-mix, low-volume production. See all comparisons.

Features

See the full roadmap for what's next.

Technical highlights

• Generated types shared by the database, application and API
• Postgres row-level security and tenant-scoped records
• Role- and attribute-based access for employees, customers and suppliers
• Realtime database subscriptions
• Shared identity and permissions across the application, API and MCP server
• Explicit dependency graphs for manufacturing operations
• Rust geometry services for STEP conversion and assembly motion planning

Get Carbon

API & MCP

The Carbon API exposes the same manufacturing operations used by the application. Each operation validates its input, updates dependent records and enforces the authenticated identity's permissions. Operations are available through two interfaces with the same arguments:

• HTTP: POST https://app.carbon.ms/api/v1/{module}/{operation}, with a published OpenAPI spec for generating a typed client in any language
• MCP: as tools for hosted or local AI agents, scoped to the permissions of the API key or signed-in user

Create a key under Settings → API Keys, then:

curl -X POST https://app.carbon.ms/api/v1/sales/getSalesOrders \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CARBON_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "args": { "limit": 10 } }'

Self-hosted deployments serve the same API at /api/v1. The Data API provides direct access to permitted tables and views when an operation is not available in the service layer.

API keys and MCP are included with Business and Enterprise plans. Using them in a self-hosted deployment requires a commercial license.

Architecture

ERP and MES are React Router apps over a single Postgres database. Permissions (row-level security), computed totals and change events live in the database itself; background work runs through Inngest, which calls back into the ERP to execute jobs. The architecture guide follows one click all the way down.

Building E2E Systems

Carbon is intended to be the core of a bespoke end-to-end manufacturing system. We provide an apps/starter and allow you to build a custom sales and shop-floor engine with Carbon at the center.

Tech Stack

Monorepo

A pnpm + Turborepo monorepo:

carbon
├── apps         # ERP, MES and the Rust assembler
├── packages     # shared TypeScript packages
├── crates       # Rust crates behind the assembler (CAD conversion, collision, motion planning)
└── docs         # docs.carbon.ms, with content and glossary as @carbon/content

/apps

/packages

Local Development

Prerequisites: Docker, Node.js 22 and pnpm (via Corepack). On Windows, use WSL or Git Bash.

git clone https://github.com/crbnos/carbon.git && cd carbon
corepack enable && pnpm install
cp .env.example .env
pnpm dev

pnpm dev boots the whole backend in Docker (Postgres, PostgREST, auth, storage, realtime, Inngest, Redis and a mail catcher), applies migrations, generates types and starts the apps:

Sign in as test@carbon.ms: the dev stack seeds that user and skips the magic link. To fill a company with a full demo story (items, BOMs, orders, jobs, inspections, journals), seed one of the industry datasets (satellite, robotics, precision, motor):

pnpm db:seed:dev -- --email test@carbon.ms --dataset satellite

No external accounts are needed to run locally. Email, Google/Microsoft sign-in, Stripe, PostHog and AI providers are all optional and configured in .env; see environment variables.

Worktrees and the crbn CLI

pnpm dev is shorthand for crbn up --no-portless. Run source ./setup.sh once to put crbn on your PATH and you get a separate, isolated stack per git worktree, so several branches can run side by side, each on its own HTTPS .dev URLs via portless:

crbn checkout -b feat/my-thing   # new branch + worktree off HEAD
crbn up                          # boot this worktree's stack at erp.<branch>.dev
crbn checkout 760                # check out PR #760 into its own worktree
crbn status | down | reset       # ports and health, stop, wipe and reboot

The full command reference is in the local development guide.