---
title: "Why findplate"
description: "The philosophy, what is in, what is out and why."
url: https://plate.findmalek.engineer/docs/why
markdown: https://plate.findmalek.engineer/docs/why.md
group: "Start"
---

# Why findplate

Most starters are a repo you clone, rename by hand and then spend a day cutting down. findplate is a generator instead: it copies a template, renames it, and removes everything you did not ask for, so what you get has no dead code and is yours from the first commit.

## Philosophy

- **Generate, then own it.** There is no runtime dependency on findplate. The output is a normal turborepo that you edit freely. The cli does not come back to update it.
- **The minimum is real.** A project with no optional modules still builds, lints and passes its tests. CI generates every module alone, all of them together and none, and checks each.
- **One way to do each thing.** One orm, one auth library, one rpc layer, one linter. Fewer choices means a template that stays tested.
- **Optional means removable.** A module is a package, its env keys and the lines that use it. Turn it off and all three are gone, not hidden behind a flag.
- **Keys are optional at runtime.** A missing key turns a feature off instead of crashing the app, so a fresh project always starts.

## What is in

- A turborepo with a landing page, a dashboard with login and an api
- Next.js, oRPC on bun, better-auth, Drizzle on Postgres, shadcn, Tailwind
- Biome for format and lint, strict TypeScript, security headers, one root `.env`
- Design presets driven by shadcn tokens
- Optional [modules](https://plate.findmalek.engineer/docs/modules.md) for storage, AI, email, chat notifications, analytics, tracing, error tracking, secrets and public pages
- Deploy paths for [Vercel or your own server](https://plate.findmalek.engineer/docs/deploy.md), PR previews, and provisioning of the pieces around it

## What is out

- **A second choice of stack.** No Prisma, no tRPC, no Auth.js, no pages router. If you want one, findplate is the wrong tool.
- **Payments, teams and billing.** Every product wants them different, and a half-built version costs more to remove than to write.
- **A component library of its own.** UI is shadcn, in your repo, so you edit the components.
- **Silent updates.** `findplate update` is a three-way merge you run on purpose. It never touches files you didn't change and lists conflicts instead of guessing, so you still read a diff.
- **Hosted services.** The modules that need a server (Umami, GlitchTip, Langfuse and the rest) point at an instance you run, with a [compose file](https://plate.findmalek.engineer/docs/self-hosted.md) each.

## Why these choices

| Choice | Why |
| --- | --- |
| oRPC with a separate api app | One typed contract for the web, the dashboard and any other client, and only one app touches the database |
| better-auth | Lives in your database and your code, no hosted tenant to depend on |
| Drizzle | Plain SQL migrations you can read and a schema in TypeScript |
| shadcn | You own the components, and presets are just tokens |
| Biome | One fast tool for format and lint, so the CI step is seconds |
| pnpm in the project, bun for the api | pnpm for strict, cacheable installs, bun for a fast api runtime |
| Markers instead of templating | The template is real code that is type-checked and tested in this repo, not strings with holes |

## Where to go next

- [Quickstart](https://plate.findmalek.engineer/docs/quickstart.md): Generate a project.

- [Modules](https://plate.findmalek.engineer/docs/modules.md): What you can switch on.

- [FAQ](https://plate.findmalek.engineer/docs/faq.md): Common questions.