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Documentation

For technical teams

Build the system your operation needs.

Norbital is a platform for operational apps — the tools your team runs work on. You author a workspace in Bolt source (collections, apps, automations, policies), and Colony turns that source into a live, versioned system: tenant apps, Workspace Studio, immutable release artifacts, and an AI agent under the same access rules.

┌───────────────────────────  Bolt  ───────────────────────────┐
│  Author a workspace as files:                                 │
│  collections/  apps/  automations/  functions/  access/       │
│                                                               │
│  bolt sync  →  one immutable artifact                         │
└──────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────┘
                               │  bundle
                               ▼
┌────────────────────────────  Colony  ─────────────────────────┐
│  one process · tenant routing · releases · facilities         │
│  Workspace Studio · release artifacts · Agent · billing       │
└──────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────────┘
                               │  serves
                               ▼
┌──────────────────────────  Browser  ──────────────────────────┐
│  tenant apps mount server-authoritative live queries; current │
│  answers stay in memory and committed changes arrive by SSE   │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Bolt defines the workspace; Colony runs it
Bolt is the code-first authoring SDK and runtime. Colony is the host that turns Bolt source into a live, versioned operational system. Shipped starter workspaces are listed on the templates page.

What you build

  • Collections — domain tables and server behavior in collections/ , plus built-in system collections like user and team
  • Client — the typed access surface: live data reads and writes, plus inference for structured model output
  • Write contract — the input, transform, and notifications declared on a collection
  • Automations — scheduled background jobs
  • Functions — typed server endpoints
  • Apps — Svelte pages for operators
  • Security — policies and approval gates on top
  • Norbius — the AI assistant, authored with envoys and tools

How to read these docs

The docs are ordered as the work happens:

  1. Quick Start — build the smallest workspace
  2. File system — the filesystem contract and how the workspace is structured
  3. Collections — model the domain: collections, relations, and server behavior
  4. Client — the typed client: live data, remote functions, and AI
  5. Security — access control and approval gates
  6. Colony — hosting, Workspace Studio, and deployment
  7. Bolt framework — optional: how Bolt works under the hood