Product announcements, feature stories, and practical guides for building with Centrali.
Prefer the terse version? Check the changelog for a chronological list of shipped updates.
Looking for a starting point? what a webhook is, SaaS backend, Centrali with Clerk, or migrating from Firebase.
Providers delete webhook events after 30 days, and a JSON blob column can't be queried by customer or amount. Flatten the fields you filter on, keep the raw payload, dedupe on event ID.
A webhook is an automated HTTP POST one app sends another the moment an event happens — no polling. How webhooks work, how they differ from an API, and how to receive and verify them, with examples.
Record TTL (time-to-live) auto-deletes database records when they expire — no cron jobs. What record TTL is, when to use it, and how database TTL differs from DNS TTL.
One API call to subscribe a customer endpoint. HMAC-signed deliveries, 5 retries over 40 minutes, full delivery log, one-click replay. No queue, no retry logic, no Svix subscription.
{{organization.id}} and {{org.id}} are the same Clerk variable (renamed) — use {{org.id}}. Null when no org is active. Claims JSON + Next.js for multi-tenant auth.
Pair every order with its Stripe charge event in a single Smart Query. Catch amount mismatches and integration bugs without scripts, cron jobs, or a data warehouse.
Run schema discovery on any schemaless collection to detect fields, infer types, and build a validated schema from real data — no manual property definition required.
Filter stored Stripe events by amount, customer, date range, or any field. Save reusable queries. Expose them as API endpoints. No database to manage.
Store GitHub webhook events with signature verification in five minutes. The same pattern works for any provider.
Build a real-time alert for failed Stripe charges in under 5 minutes. One function, one trigger, any messaging tool — no AWS, no Azure, no polling.
Stop losing Stripe webhook events after 30 days. Store every event permanently and query by customer, amount, or any field — no server, no database setup, under 5 minutes.
From zero to production in minutes — scaffold a Next.js app, store data in Centrali, add webhooks and compute functions for backend logic, and deploy to Vercel or Netlify.
Generate short-lived bearer tokens for service accounts directly from the console. No more manual client_credentials flows when testing locally.
A new credential type designed for browser apps — scoped to specific collections and actions, safe to embed in client code, no OAuth flow required.
Generate full page layouts from a natural-language prompt. Scaffold new pages or improve existing ones — with validation and iterative refinement built in, no frontend code required.
Add confirmation dialogs, detail views, and form modals to your published pages — configured entirely from the page editor, no frontend code required.
Orchestration compute steps can now hold encrypted parameters — API keys, tokens, and credentials that are encrypted at rest, masked in responses, and decrypted only at execution time.
Bind URL parameters, auth context, record fields, and static values to block data sources — enabling master-detail patterns, filtered views, and personalized pages without writing code.
Write HTML templates with {{field}} placeholders that render live collection data. Build custom cards, banners, and layouts without writing JavaScript.
How we chained approval steps into automated GitHub repo provisioning with Centrali orchestrations — a Platform Engineering Hub case study with the actual workflow design.
Upload a CSV file and Centrali creates a fully typed collection with your data already imported. Preview, map columns, pick types, and import — no scripting required.
Write, update, or delete thousands of records with bulk (fire-and-forget) or batch (synchronous with per-row errors) — same API, different trade-offs. When to pick which.
Turn any collection into a published web app in minutes — list views, detail pages, forms, dashboards — all backed by live data. No frontend code, no deploy step.
We rebuilt the Centrali admin console from scratch — new UI framework, new navigation, and new tools for managing your entire platform from one place.
Auto-expire sessions, promo codes, and temporary records with a single TTL field — no cron jobs, no cleanup scripts. Set default TTL per collection or override per record.
Create a collection with zero properties and start pushing data immediately. Centrali learns your schema from real records and suggests properties for you.
Create-or-update a record by any business key in one call — no race conditions, no duplicate-detection logic to write. PostgreSQL advisory locks handle concurrent writes safely.
Parameterize saved queries with runtime variables, join records across collections, and get cleaner result structures. Save once, call with different inputs — no query duplication.
Build complex multi-step workflows without writing code. Chain functions, add conditional branching, schedule delays, and monitor every execution with our new visual workflow editor.
Chain compute steps into order-processing, approval, and data-sync pipelines — with real examples. Conditional branching, retries, and execution history all handled by Centrali Automation.
Branch workflows on record fields, response data, or runtime inputs. Comparison operators and data-path references let you build conditional logic without writing code.
Stop guessing why API calls fail with 403 errors. The new Permission Introspection feature lets you see exactly what permissions a service account has, simulate authorization checks, and fix issues with a guided wizard.
Keep using Clerk, Auth0, or Okta for authentication while leveraging Centrali for fine-grained authorization. No user duplication, no token exchange—just pass your JWT.
Add policy-based authorization to a Next.js app in under an hour — works with Clerk, Auth0, Okta, or any JWT issuer. Fine-grained permissions without writing auth middleware.
Store API keys and tokens as encrypted secret string fields. Monitor trigger retries and failures from one dashboard — with platform-wide security and observability hardening in 2.5.0.
Generate schemas from plain English, search your data with natural language, validate records with AI checks, and catch anomalies automatically — all built into 2.4.0.
A comprehensive guide to building a production-ready SaaS backend. Covers authentication, data modeling, webhook ingestion, outbound webhook delivery, search, file storage, and serverless functions.
Find any record instantly with global search, define relationships between collections, and leverage queries in the SDK.
We're building first-class record relationships with referential integrity, cascade behaviors, and automatic expansion. Here's a preview of what's coming.
Real-time record subscriptions, on-the-fly image transformation, file storage from compute functions, and enterprise security hardening — all shipped in 2.2.0.
Resize, compress, and convert images with URL parameters — no need to store multiple versions or run a transformation service. One source file, any size on demand.
Save binary files — PDFs, images, API responses — directly from compute functions. Generate shipping labels, invoices, or reports on demand without leaving Centrali.
Render emails, receipts, and notifications from compute functions with a single line of code. Handlebars templating with custom helpers — no external templating service to run.
Subscribe to record changes with Server-Sent Events (SSE). Keep your UI in sync without polling.
Move collections, queries, functions, and triggers between workspaces with conflict-aware imports.
Why we built Centrali, what 2.0 includes, and how it fits into your stack.
No credit card. Create an endpoint, paste the signing secret, and every handler runs only on verified events.
Takes less than 5 minutes to get started.