# What's ZenStack
> Read full documentation at 👉🏻 https://zenstack.dev/docs.
ZenStack is a TypeScript database toolkit for developing full-stack or backend Node.js/Bun applications. It provides a unified data modeling and query solution with the following features:
- 🔧 Modern schema-first ORM that's compatible with [Prisma](https://github.com/prisma/prisma)'s schema and API
- 📊 Versatile API - high-level ORM queries + low-level [Kysely](https://kysely.dev) query builder
- 🔐 Built-in access control and data validation
- 🚀 Advanced data modeling patterns like [polymorphism](https://zenstack.dev/docs/orm/polymorphism)
- 🧩 Designed for extensibility and flexibility
- ⚙️ Automatic CRUD web APIs with adapters for popular frameworks
- 🏖️ Automatic [TanStack Query](https://github.com/TanStack/query) hooks for easy CRUD from the frontend
- 💎 [Zod](https://zod.dev) schema generation
# What's New in V3
ZenStack V3 is a major rewrite. It replaced Prisma ORM with its own ORM engine built on top of [Kysely](https://kysely.dev) while keeping a Prisma-compatible query API. This architecture change brings the level of flexibility that we couldn't imagine in previous versions. Please check [this blog post](https://zenstack.dev/blog/next-chapter-1) for why we made this bold decision.
Even without using advanced features, ZenStack offers the following benefits as a drop-in replacement to Prisma:
1. Pure TypeScript implementation without any Rust/WASM components.
2. More TypeScript type inference, less code generation.
3. Fully-typed query-builder API as a better escape hatch compared to Prisma's [raw queries](https://www.prisma.io/docs/orm/prisma-client/using-raw-sql/raw-queries) or [typed SQL](https://www.prisma.io/docs/orm/prisma-client/using-raw-sql/typedsql).
# Try It Now
[](https://stackblitz.com/~/github.com/zenstackhq/v3-doc-quick-start?file=zenstack%2fschema.zmodel&file=main.ts&view=editor&showSidebar=0&hideNavigation=1&hideExplorer=1)
## Installation
### 1. Creating a new project
Use the following command to scaffold a simple TypeScript command line application with ZenStack configured:
```bash
npm create zenstack@latest my-project
```
### 2. Setting up an existing project
Or, if you have an existing project, use the CLI to initialize it:
```bash
npx @zenstackhq/cli@latest init
```
### 3. Setting up manually
Alternatively, you can set it up manually:
```bash
npm install -D @zenstackhq/cli
npm install @zenstackhq/schema @zenstackhq/orm
```
Then create a `zenstack` folder and a `schema.zmodel` file in it.
# Documentation
[https://zenstack.dev/docs/](https://zenstack.dev/docs/)
# Sponsors
Thank you for your generous support!
## Current Sponsors
# Community
Join our [discord server](https://discord.gg/Ykhr738dUe) for chat and updates!
# Contributors
Thanks to all the contributors who have helped make ZenStack better!
### Source
### Docs
## License
[MIT](LICENSE)
