The Designer

The Designer is a browser-based editor for BaseForge specs. It ships inside the baseforge .NET tool — there is nothing extra to install.

baseforge new orders           # start a new service
baseforge update orders        # open an existing orders/spec.yaml (and identity/auth.yaml, if present)
baseforge new orders --port 4000 --no-browser

It opens at http://localhost:3500 (the next free port is used if that one is taken). Everything you do is saved to plain YAML on disk when you generate — the Designer is a convenience, not a lock-in.

Layout

The icon rail on the left switches between three views, plus the language switch and the close button:

Rail	View	What you do there
S	Service	Service settings, entities, fields, relations, external references, access rules, list filters
I	Identity	The central auth service: providers, seed admin, roles, registration, user profile fields
E	ER diagram	A live diagram of the current spec; copy DBML or open it in dbdiagram.io
EN / TR	Language	Switch the interface language (remembered in your browser)
⏻	Close	Stops the Designer, its port and any containers it started

Service view

Service settings

• Service name / Database — used for the project name, namespace and PostgreSQL database.
• Connect to the central Identity with JWT — turns on JWT validation (authority, audience) and [Authorize] protection. When on, you also get default access and super roles (see Identity → Authorization).
• Multi-tenancy — adds TenantId and tenant isolation to every entity.
• REST / gRPC / Postgres ports — host ports for Docker. The Designer reads the workspace registry and pre-fills ports that don't collide with services you already generated.
• Outbox tuning — max retries and retention days for services that publish events.

Entities and fields

Add entities on the left. For each one you can:

• Add fields and pick a type from the dropdown. The ⚙ button reveals nullable, maxLength, default, enum values and the counter flag.
• Toggle Pagination, Sorting, Search and Append-only.
• Choose an owner field and an access rule per action (list, getById, create, update, delete).
• Pick list filters (equality query parameters) and a visibility filter (e.g. hide drafts from everyone except admins and the author).
• Draw relations to other entities in the same service (one-to-many, many-to-one, one-to-one, optionally nullable).
• Add external references to entities in other services (service/Entity, stored as an ID, resolved via gRPC).

Audit fields — Id, CreatedAt, UpdatedAt, CreatedBy, soft delete — come from BaseEntity; you never add them yourself.

Identity view

Configure the central authentication service that every other service trusts:

• Central settings — service name, database, issuer and ports.
• Providers — Google, GitHub, Microsoft, Facebook (and Apple via YAML). Toggle one on and paste its client id/secret. Secrets are written to .env, never to committed files.
• Seed admin — the first admin account.
• Roles — Admin and User always exist; add your own (e.g. Editor, SuperAdmin).
• Self-registration — off by default; when on, choose the role new users receive.
• Profile fields — domain-specific fields added to the user, editable by the user or only by admins, optionally included in the token.

Generate, build, run

Generate + Build writes the spec and the full source, runs dotnet build, and shows the file list and build result. If a .slnx/.sln is found nearby you can have the new project added to it.

After a successful build:

• Run starts the service with docker compose up --build -d --wait and links you to the API reference (Scalar) or, for Identity, the sign-in page.
• Stop runs docker compose down.

ER diagram view

The diagram is drawn live from the spec: solid connectors are in-service foreign keys, dashed boxes are external service references (no FK, just an ID). Copy DBML puts a DBML version on your clipboard; Open in dbdiagram.io does the same and opens the site.

Closing

Close the Designer with ⏻ or the Close button. If you just close the tab, the Designer notices the missing heartbeat and shuts itself down after a few minutes.