Same engine,
two starters.
Both ship the same CRUDView library, MCP server, REST API, auth, tokens, and admin surfaces. smallstack-tabler is a downstream fork that tracks this repo and swaps the chrome for Tabler. The engine is the same. The chrome is the choice.
Pick by what you're shipping, not who's making it. They share a backend; they part ways on the surface.
Two editions, one decision.
A polished CRUD & headless starter.
Internal apps and API/MCP servers that need to feel right.
Sweet spot: internal admins, ops tools, line-of-business CRUD, and headless deployments (REST APIs, MCP servers) where the admin is for staff and the heavy lifting happens over JSON.
- Django admin's base CSS, customized per palette—no extra framework
- 5 palettes × light/dark via the user-menu
- Tiny footprint — no Tabler, no Bootstrap, no jQuery
- HTMX baked in to every CRUDView
- 9 admin surfaces pre-themed (Explorer, MCP, API, Tokens…)
A polished CRUD starter, with Tabler chrome.
When the UI is the product.
For public sites, customer dashboards, chart-heavy reports, kanban & calendar utilities—anywhere the beauty of the surface matters as much as the data.
- Forks & tracks smallstack upstream — same engine, same release cadence
- Tabler theme, MIT, applied to every admin surface
- 11 accents × 5 bases × 10 layouts, in-page switchable
- ApexCharts, Flatpickr, Choices, Dropzone… all wired
- 20+ AI skill files for vibe-coding Tabler UIs
Tabler is a free, open-source admin framework. smallstack-tabler applies it everywhere—not just to your pages.
A theme, applied already.
Tabler's chrome is wired into every SmallStack admin out of the box: heartbeat, MCP, API, tokens, users, activity, help. Open the repo and you're already looking at a Tabler app.
The chrome, ready to extend
The Tabler theme is open source. The cards, tables, forms, modals, and badges in your admin are the same components you'd extend for any new page.
Plugins, pre-wired
ApexCharts, Flatpickr, Choices.js, Dropzone, FullCalendar, jsVectorMap, Sortable.js, Signature Pad—wired into the stack so charts and rich forms land in one import.
Runtime switching, anywhere
11 accent colors, 5 gray bases, 10 layouts, dark/light—all from the in-page settings panel. Users tune the chrome without a redeploy.
20+ AI skills for vibe-coding
A library of skill files for AI agents — covering layouts, components, charts, forms, htmx patterns, page recipes. Ship Tabler pages with prompts, not just code.
What's actually different, row by row. Sweet spot in green, capable in accent, BYO in amber, absent in grey.
Side by side, line by line.
| Capability | smallstack | smallstack-tabler |
|---|---|---|
| CRUDView backend | Full |
Full |
| Light / dark mode | Yes |
Yes |
| Color palettes | 5 palettes |
11 × 5 × 10 |
| Built-in HTMX | Yes |
Yes |
| Charts out of the box | BYO |
ApexCharts |
| Form plugins (Flatpickr, Dropzone…) | BYO |
Bundled |
| Public-site polish | Capable |
Sweet spot |
| Internal admin polish | Sweet spot |
Sweet spot |
| AI skills for the theme | 1 (modern-dark) |
20+ in tabler/ |
| Theme is open-source | n/a — first-party |
Tabler · MIT |
Choose your edition.
Both are free. Both are MIT. Both run on SQLite, Docker, and Kamal. The only question is which shape your idea wants to be.