🚀 apx is the toolkit for building Databricks Apps ⚡

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✨ apx bundles together a set of tools and libraries to help you with app development lifecycle: develop, build and deploy.

💡 The main idea of apx is to provide convenient, fast and AI-friendly development experience.

🚀 Quickstart

1. Run the command to initialize the project:

uvx git+https://github.com/databricks-solutions/apx.git init

2. Open the project in Cursor (or any IDE of your choice, for that matter), allow usage of apx and shadcn mcp
3. Start providing prompts to build an app, e.g.:

Use apx mcp server to start development server, then create a nice application for order management. Use shadcn mcp to add new components, make sure style is consistent and data is properly fetched from the backend. Start with mocking the backend data (yet use pydantic models), then implement the actual backend.

4. Deploy whenever ready via Databricks CLI:

databricks bundle deploy -p <your-profile>

🛠️ Stack

apx is built on top of the following stack:

• 🐍 Python + FastAPI in the backend
• ⚛️ React + shadcn/ui in the frontend

🔌 To connect the frontend and the backend, apx uses orval to generate the client code from the OpenAPI schema.

🚀 Init

To kickstart your app, please make sure you have:

• ✅ uv installed
• ✅ bun installed
• ✅ git installed

Then you can use the following command:

uvx git+https://github.com/databricks-solutions/apx.git init

This will launch an interactive prompt that will guide you through:

• 📝 Naming your app (or using a randomly generated name)
• 🔧 Selecting a Databricks profile (if you have any configured)
• 🤖 Setting up AI assistant rules (cursor/vscode/codex/claude)

The app will be created in the current working directory by default.

⚙️ Non-Interactive Mode

You can also specify all options via command-line flags to skip the prompts:

uvx https://github.com/databricks-solutions/apx.git init \
  --name my-app \
  --template essential \
  --profile my-profile \
  --assistant cursor \
  my-app

This will create a new app in the my-app directory with the app name my-app.

📁 Project Structure

The project structure is as follows:

my-app
├── package.json
├── pyproject.toml
├── README.md
├── src
│   └── sample
│       ├── __dist__
│       ├── backend
│       │   ├── app.py
│       │   ├── config.py
│       │   ├── dependencies.py
│       │   ├── models.py
│       │   ├── router.py
│       │   ├── runtime.py
│       │   └── utils.py
│       └── ui
│           ├── components
│           ├── lib
│           ├── routes
│           ├── main.tsx

📦 The __dist__ directory is the directory where the frontend bundle is stored, so it can be served by the backend.

🎮 Commands

🚀 init

uvx git+https://github.com/databricks-solutions/apx.git init

Initializes a new app project with interactive prompts for configuration. Supports optional flags to skip prompts:

• --name, -n: Specify the app name
• --template, -t: Choose a template (essential/stateful)
  • 🎯 Essential template is a basic template with UI and API.
  • 💾 Stateful template also includes Lakebase integration via sqlmodel.
• --profile, -p: Specify a Databricks profile
• --assistant, -a: Choose AI assistant rules (cursor/vscode/codex/claude)
• --layout, -l: Choose the layout (basic/sidebar)

🔥 dev - Development Server Management

The dev command group manages development servers in detached mode:

Start Development Servers

uv run apx dev start

Starts backend, frontend, and OpenAPI watcher in detached mode.

Options:

• --frontend-port: Frontend port (default: 5173)
• --backend-port: Backend port (default: 8000)
• --host: Host for dev, frontend, and backend servers (default: localhost)
• --obo/--no-obo: Enable/disable On-Behalf-Of header (default: enabled)
• --openapi/--no-openapi: Enable/disable OpenAPI watcher (default: enabled)
• --max-retries: Maximum number of retry attempts for processes (default: 10)
• --watch: Start servers and tail logs until Ctrl+C, then stop all servers

Check Server Status

uv run apx dev status

Shows status of all running development servers (backend, frontend, OpenAPI watcher).

View Logs

uv run apx dev logs

Displays historical logs from development servers.

Options:

• --duration, -d: Show logs from last N seconds
• --ui: Show only frontend logs
• --backend: Show only backend logs
• --openapi: Show only OpenAPI logs

Tail Logs

uv run apx dev logs -f

Continuously streams logs from development servers.

Options:

• --duration, -d: Initially show logs from last N seconds
• --timeout, -t: Stop tailing after N seconds
• --ui: Show only frontend logs
• --backend: Show only backend logs
• --app: Show only app logs
• --raw: Show raw log output without prefix formatting

Stop Development Servers

uv run apx dev stop

Stops all running development servers.

📦 build

uv run apx build

Prepares the app for deployment by building both frontend assets and Python wheel.

🔧 openapi

uv run apx openapi

Manually generates OpenAPI schema and orval client. Use --watch to enable automatic regeneration on changes.

Note: you don't need to run this command manually, watcher will run automatically when you start the development server.

📜 Project todos

• Add chat template
• Add chat template
• MCP of apx commands
• Add a way to add a custom template

License and Third Party Libraries

License

© 2025 Databricks, Inc. All rights reserved. The source in this project is provided subject to the Databricks License.

Third Party Libraries

library	description	license	source
FastAPI	High-performance API framework based on Starlette	MIT	GitHub
Pydantic	Data validation and settings management using Python type hints	MIT	GitHub
SQLModel	SQLAlchemy-like ORM for Python	MIT	GitHub
Databricks SDK for Python	Official Databricks SDK for Python	Apache-2.0	GitHub
orval	OpenAPI client generator	MIT	GitHub
shadcn/ui	UI library for React	MIT	GitHub
React	Library for building user interfaces	MIT	GitHub
TypeScript	Programming language for web development	Apache-2.0	GitHub
Bun	JavaScript runtime	MIT	GitHub
uv	Fast, modern Python package manager	MIT	GitHub
jinja2	Template engine for Python	MIT	GitHub
rich	CLI interface library for Python	MIT	GitHub
typer	Typer is a library for building CLI applications	MIT	GitHub
uvicorn	ASGI server for Python	BSD-3-Clause	GitHub
httpx	HTTP client for Python	BSD-3-Clause	GitHub
watchfiles	File change monitoring for Python	MIT	GitHub
hatchling	Build backend for Python	MIT	GitHub
uv-dynamic-versioning	Dynamic versioning for Python packages	MIT	GitHub
vite	Frontend build tool for JavaScript	MIT	GitHub
tailwindcss	Utility-first CSS framework for rapid UI development	MIT	GitHub
smol-toml	Tom's Obvious, Minimal Language for JS	MIT	GitHub
psutil	Cross-platform library for retrieving information on running processes and system utilization (CPU, memory, disks, network) in Python.	BSD-3-Clause	GitHub