🔗 The essence of Ash Framework

Ash Framework was created to solve a fundamental problem in application development. When you build a new app, you want to focus on the valuable, innovative parts - what's visible above the waterline of the software development iceberg. However, modern web applications require an enormous amount of "below the waterline" functionality that's essential but not where you want to spend your time.

At Alembic, we've built many custom business applications and consistently observe the same pattern. Our clients want to—and should—focus their investment on innovative features that deliver unique business value. Yet traditionally, significant effort gets consumed by "commodity" functionality that doesn't differentiate their product.

These necessary but standard components often require teams to reinvent solutions that already exist across thousands of applications. Our clients rightfully question investing heavily in these "below the waterline" elements when they should be allocating resources toward their competitive advantages.

Surely you don't have to spend time building logins, you've done this before right?

-- a typical software client customer

Authentication is a perfect example - most clients don't even specify login functionality as a feature. Similarly, admin interfaces are considered table stakes for modern applications. The list is extensive: admin UIs, observability, security, and more. All important, but time spent there can feel wasteful when you'd rather be innovating.

Ash's primary goal is to keep you focused on the innovative work above the waterline while minimising time spent below it. The framework accomplishes this by modelling your domain and deriving everything else.