From nothing to a branch in five minutes
Install FoxByte, sign in, make a key, branch and connect. Every step is one command, on every system.
Install
$ brew install lima $ curl -fsSL https://get.thefoxbyte.com/install.sh | sh $ fox setup
fox setup creates a dedicated Lima VM with Docker and ZFS and brings everything up. The first run downloads Ubuntu, which takes a few minutes.
Sign in to the console
When setup finishes, the console opens by itself at https://localhost:8080 with a one-time setup token already in the link.
- 1
Accept the certificate
A fresh install uses a self-signed certificate, so the browser warns once. Accept it, or set FOX_TLS_CERT and FOX_TLS_KEY to a real pair.
- 2
Create the first account
Choose an email and a password. The first account can override the destructive-change guardrail, which is why it needs the token.
- 3
Lost the link?
fox setup-token prints the token again, and fox user create <email> makes an account from the terminal.
Make an API key
Keys are the password for every Postgres connection and the bearer token for the API. A key is shown once, so copy it. Make one on the console’s API keys page, or from the terminal.
--agent makes a key for an AI agent: its changes are recorded as an agent’s and the agent guardrails apply to it.
$ fox apikey create you@example.com laptop $ fox apikey create you@example.com claude --agent
Check the install and make a branch
main already has three small sample tables, users, projects and events, so there is something to branch straight away. Set FOX_NO_DEMO=1 before setup to start empty, or remove them later with fox demo drop.
$ fox check $ fox status $ fox branch create qa $ fox sql --branch qa "SELECT count(*) FROM users"
Connect any Postgres client
Everything goes through the gateway on port 6432. The database name is the branch, and the password is your API key.
fox blackbox qa shows the CREATE TABLE you just ran, attributed to you. Deleting the branch leaves main untouched.
$ psql "postgresql://dbadmin:<API_KEY>@localhost:6432/qa?sslmode=require" qa=> CREATE TABLE notes (id serial PRIMARY KEY, body text); $ fox blackbox qa $ fox branch delete qa
Point your app at it
FoxByte is PostgreSQL, so every driver and ORM connects unchanged: Prisma, Drizzle, SQLAlchemy, Django, GORM, ActiveRecord and the rest. Set one environment variable.
For the REST API there are dependency-free Python and TypeScript clients, and an OpenAPI spec served by the engine at /api/openapi.yaml.
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://dbadmin:<API_KEY>@localhost:6432/main?sslmode=require"Where to go from here
That’s the whole setup.
Everything else is a fox command, a console page or a SQL statement away.
$ curl -fsSL https://get.thefoxbyte.com/install.sh | sh