This guide builds a simple Todo API end-to-end using ɳSelf. No frontend, pure backend API with GraphQL and JWT auth.

mkdir todo-api && cd todo-api
nself init --name todo-api --domain localhost

Accept all defaults. This generates a .env file with secure random secrets.

nself build
nself start

Wait for all services to show healthy. Then confirm URLs:

nself urls

nself db hasura console

This opens https://localhost/hasura/console in your browser. The admin secret is in your .env as HASURA_GRAPHQL_ADMIN_SECRET.

In the Hasura Console:

1. Click Data → Create Table
2. Table name: todos
3. Add columns:

• id, UUID, primary key, default: gen_random_uuid()
• title, Text, not null
• done, Boolean, not null, default: false
• created_at, Timestamptz, default: now()

4. Click Add Table

Hasura will prompt you to track the new table. Click Track to expose it in the GraphQL API.

In the GraphiQL explorer, insert a todo:

mutation {
  insert_todos_one(object: { title: "Learn nSelf" }) {
    id
    title
    done
    created_at
  }
}

Then query all todos:

query {
  todos {
    id
    title
    done
    created_at
  }
}

The Auth service is running at https://localhost/auth/. Register a user:

curl -X POST https://localhost/auth/signup/email-password \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"email":"[email protected]","password":"password123"}'

The response includes a JWT token. Use it in subsequent GraphQL requests:

curl -X POST https://localhost/v1/graphql \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <jwt_token>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"{ todos { id title } }"}'

Set up row-level security in Hasura permissions to restrict rows by user ID.

nself stop

Next: Architecture · Plugin-Overview