What's DeesseJS?

DeesseJS is a template registry and starter framework for shipping production-ready apps across web, mobile, edge, and AI surfaces. It's not a SaaS product, an ORM, or a UI library. It's a curated set of opinionated starters that share the same cross-cutting contracts.

Two Ideas: Surfaces and Contracts

Every DeesseJS template can be described along two axes.

Surfaces are the targets you ship to.

• Web (Next.js, Astro)
• Mobile (Expo, React Native)
• Edge (Cloudflare Workers, Vercel Edge)
• AI agents (Vercel eve, OpenAI-compatible runtimes)
• Desktop (Electron, Tauri)

Contracts are the cross-cutting concerns every app needs.

• Auth (Better Auth with email + GitHub OAuth + device flow)
• Database (drizzle ORM on Postgres)
• Email (Resend in prod, console in dev)
• Storage (S3-compatible)
• Cookies (GDPR consent banner + Zustand store)
• Payments (Stripe via Better Auth)

A template is one surface × N contracts. next-app-starter is web × {auth, database, email, cookies}. expo-starter is mobile × {auth, database}. The contracts share the same wiring in every template, so once you learn one you know them all.

What DeesseJS is

• A public registry of templates, browsable in the CLI and on the web.
• A published CLI (@deessejs/cli) for scaffolding, browsing, and signing in.
• A monorepo of contracts: the auth, database, and email packages version, test, and share across every starter.
• A device-flow authentication path that ties the CLI to a web session without ever holding a password.

What DeesseJS isn't

• Not a framework. DeesseJS templates build on Next.js, Expo, Astro, and similar runtimes. You adopt a surface's framework, not DeesseJS itself.
• Not a hosting platform. Templates scaffold locally and deploy wherever you deploy.
• Not an ORM or UI library. drizzle, Tailwind, shadcn/ui, Better Auth are all third-party dependencies you opt into per template.
• Not locked in. A DeesseJS scaffolded project has no runtime dependency on DeesseJS infrastructure. You can fork a template repo and walk away.

Where to go next

• Run Quick Start: pick a template and npx deessejs@latest init <slug>.
• Read Comparisons for how DeesseJS differs from the alternatives.
• Skim CLI: Introduction for the install story in depth.