TL;DR
Spinning up a safe, multi-tenant, lossless event‑sourced backend usually takes weeks to get the basics right.
Intent does it in ~5 minutes. You get CQRS, deterministic, framework-free core, durable workflows, a PostgreSQL event store, row-level security, and a DevX UI out of the box.
Good for AI orchestration, fintech/insurtech, HRIS, or any domain where keeping the intent behind every action matters.
Live demo: https://intent.heart.dev/devx
Repo: https://github.com/geeewhy/intent
The origin story
I spent a decade in fintech, hr tech, mobility, conversational AI, manufacturing and processing...then I had some downtime. My partner asked me to write a food delivery app, for our own cooking.
I planned a quick CRUD.. no DB, just a filestore. Easy.
“I want to see recipes and maybe you get AI to generate how we can make meals look nice...garnish setup is important.”
(Sure.)
“It should warn you when we’re low on ingredients,” .. “and remind you to thaw the steak three hours before you cook.”
(Another cron....)
“Can you get to AI to manage our kitchen pantry? We have stuff expiring...”
(...entering stock management...how nice)
“We definitely need push notifications and order receive confirmations”
(...notifications and orchestrations)
Suddenly I had a demanding product manager.
If I was on the hook for the tech, I might as well do it with intent. Six months of foundational work later, I ended up with Intent ... a general-purpose event-sourced platform that ended up powering more than that tiny app (which, yes, is still waiting in the backlog).
What you get out-of-the-box
| Capability | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Lossless backend processing | Every command, event, and projection is persisted and replayable; Crash‑safe, replayable command/event store, no lost data. |
| Ports-first hexagon | Business logic stays framework‑agnostic; Postgres & Temporal plug in cleanly, Wire your UI however you like |
| Tenant isolation by default | Row-level security and namespaced workflows prevent cross-tenant leaks. |
| DevX companion UI | Inspect commands, events, and projections live at https://intent.heart.dev/devx. |
| Embedded tooling | Ships with setup, projection drift checkers, policy linters, and more for you and your CI. |
(Full feature table lives in the README.)
Try it in 5 minutes
You only need Docker, Node 22 +, and Git:
git clone https://github.com/geeewhy/intent.git
cd intent
docker compose up -d postgres temporal temporal-ui
npm run setup eventstore
cp .env.local .env
npm run dev:worker aggregates # starts aggregates worker
npm run dev:worker sagas # starts sagas worker
# To start devx
cd devex-ui
npm install
npm run dev
# DevX UI → http://localhost:8081
Curious how it's structured?
Appreciate the early and candid feedback!
- Does the quick-start work on your machine?
- Your use case? What would you need before using this in production?
- Any surprises with the RLS / Projection tooling?
- Would you like a MongoDB port ... hope not but okay.
- Any other pain points on onboarding?
Open an issue, comment below, or reach out. Always happy to tighten things up if this helps folks ship faster. Star the repo if it saves you a weekend or if you want to see it grow. I prioritize based on interest. Need a safe ES backbone for your AI or fintech stack? I'm open to chat.
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