What is Standards
Declare your objects once in TypeScript; the API, validation, permissions, admin app and agent tools follow.
Most apps spend their first days rebuilding the same things: a data model, a REST API on top of it, validation, roles, an admin table. Standards ships all of that from one declaration.
You describe your objects in TypeScript, push them to a workspace, and start reading and writing records. You open the same workspace in the Standards app and see those objects as tables, forms and views, ready to browse, edit and share. Nothing is generated into your repository; the workspace is the backend.
It is built for the way small apps get made now: you vibe-code the app, with an agent or by hand, and the data lives somewhere you can actually look at and manage. Your agent gets the same objects as tools over MCP, so it can read and write the workspace with you.
The workspace is not read-only for the people who use it. On app.standards.new they add attributes to your objects, create their own objects, and build and change views: tables, kanbans, forms, filtered tabs. Everything they add lives next to what your code declared, and the next schema.sync leaves it in place. You ship the model; they finish the app.
The mental model
Five words cover almost everything you will do.
| Concept | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Workspace | One tenant: its schema, its records, its users and its API keys. | Your company's CRM |
| Object | A type of record. Declared in code, or created by a user in the app. | contacts, incidents |
| Attribute | A typed field on an object. Standards validates it on every write. | email, text, required |
| Record | One row of an object: an id, timestamps, and your attributes. | Marie Dupont |
| API key | The credential the SDK, the CLI and MCP all use. It carries the roles of the user who created it. | stndrds_… |
Three doors into a workspace
SDK
Declare your schema, sync it, then read and write typed records from any Node server.
CLI
List, search, create and update records from a terminal. JSON, table or CSV out.
MCP
Give Claude Code, Codex or Cursor the same access your API key has.
All three talk to the same REST API at https://api.standards.new/v1 and see the same permissions. Pick the one that fits the job. Nothing you build with one is hidden from the others.
Why developers pick Standards
- Every object gets a full REST surface: list, search, read, create, update, delete.
- Permissions apply per object and per action. You declare them nowhere; the key's roles decide.
- The admin app you did not build: tables, forms and views come from the declaration.
- Agents get your objects as tools: up to 19 tools, narrowed to what your key may do.
Every record you read or write is typed from the builder, from the select option to the Date on createdAt. See Type safety.
Need your own API host? A dedicated instance runs the same code under a baseUrl of yours.
Next steps
- Quick start: declare one object, sync it, and write your first record in five minutes.
- Objects and records: the concepts every other page builds on.
- Status page cookbook: a complete app on the SDK, from schema to a public page.