Your backend architecture,
readable by machines.

AI agents see files, not architecture.

AI coding agents are powerful, but they operate blind. They can generate code, but they cannot reason about what a change will break, which invariants must hold, or which modules they should not touch.

Traditional frameworks — Express, NestJS, Rails, Django — were designed for human developers who carry the system's architecture in their heads. Decorators, middleware chains, and implicit conventions work when the person writing code already understands the system. AI agents do not have that context.

The result: AI-generated code that compiles but violates business rules, crosses module boundaries, breaks invariants, and requires constant human review to catch architectural mistakes.

Explicit system truth.

SysMARA makes your architecture a formal artifact. Every entity, capability, policy, invariant, module boundary, and data flow is declared in YAML specs, validated with Zod schemas, and compiled into a typed system graph. There is nothing to guess. There is nothing hidden.

When an AI agent needs to add a capability, it reads the system graph, checks which entities are involved, which invariants must hold, which policies govern access, and which module boundaries it must respect. Before writing any code, it can generate a change plan with impact analysis and risk classification.

Four pillars.

What you declare.

SysMARA ORM: the AI-first database layer.

Traditional ORMs hide SQL behind abstraction layers designed for humans. SysMARA ORM does the opposite — it makes every database operation transparent, bounded, and machine-readable.

Flow Execution Engine: flows that actually run.

Declared flows are no longer just documentation. The Flow Execution Engine executes multi-step workflows with saga compensation, retry with exponential backoff, condition evaluation, and AI-readable execution logs.

Build from one prompt.

Write a single product description. An AI agent reads BOOTSTRAP.md, generates all YAML specs, validates, compiles, implements capability handlers, and starts a running server. One prompt — full backend.

# The actual prompt sent to Claude Code:
"Use SysMARA (@sysmara/core). Build a SaaS task manager.
npm init -y && npm install @sysmara/core && npx sysmara init
Create system/ specs: entities (User, Workspace, Task, Comment),
capabilities (create_workspace, invite_member, create_task,
assign_task, complete_task, add_comment), policies, invariants,
modules, flows. Then: npx sysmara build && npx sysmara compile"

# What happened (verified, 0 errors):
$ npx sysmara build
  ✓ 0 errors  1 warning (cosmetic)
$ npx sysmara compile
  ✓ 18 files generated
  ✓ 6 route handlers  6 test scaffolds  6 metadata files
  ✓ system-graph.json — 20 nodes, 27 edges

Scaffold: from specs to code in one step.

After sysmara build, your app/ directory is no longer empty. The scaffold generator reads your YAML specs and produces starter TypeScript implementation files — typed entity interfaces, capability handlers, policy enforcers, invariant validators, and module service classes.

What it looks like.

# system/entities.yaml
- name: subscription
  description: A recurring billing subscription
  module: billing
  fields:
    - name: plan_id
      type: string
      required: true
    - name: status
      type: string
      required: true
      constraints:
        - type: enum
          value: [active, paused, cancelled, past_due]
    - name: current_period_end
      type: datetime
      required: true
  invariants:
    - cannot_downgrade_with_unpaid_invoices

# system/capabilities.yaml
- name: cancel_subscription
  description: Cancel an active subscription
  module: billing
  entities: [subscription, invoice]
  input:
    - name: subscription_id
      type: string
      required: true
    - name: reason
      type: string
      required: false
  output:
    - name: subscription
      type: object
      required: true
  policies: [billing_admin, owner_transfer]
  invariants: [cannot_downgrade_with_unpaid_invoices]
  sideEffects: [send_cancellation_email, prorate_final_invoice]

$ sysmara validate
[OK] Parsed 4 entities, 14 capabilities, 5 policies, 8 invariants, 3 modules, 3 flows

$ sysmara impact entity subscription
Target: entity:subscription
Affected modules: billing, workspaces
Affected capabilities: cancel_subscription, upgrade_subscription, downgrade_subscription
Affected invariants: cannot_downgrade_with_unpaid_invoices
Impact radius: 12 nodes

$ sysmara plan create "Add team billing"
[OK] Change plan written to .framework/plans/plan-a1b2c3d4e5f6.yaml
Risk: medium | Affected nodes: 8 | Human review: yes

Real-world systems.