Entity-First Design

In Nevr, the Entity is the single source of truth for your entire application.

What is Entity-First?

Instead of defining schemas in multiple places, you define one Entity that generates everything:

const user = entity("user", {
  name: string,
  email: string.unique(),
  role: string.default("user"),
})

From this single definition, Nevr derives:

Output	Description
Database Schema	Prisma model with constraints
REST API	GET, POST, PATCH, DELETE endpoints
Validation	Input validation rules
E2E Type Safety	End-to-end type safety from backend to frontend
OpenAPI Spec	Documentation for all endpoints

Traditional vs Entity-First

Traditional Approach

// 1. Database schema (schema.prisma)
model User {
  id    String @id
  name  String
  email String @unique
}

// 2. DTO (user.dto.ts)
interface CreateUserDto {
  name: string
  email: string
}

// 3. Controller (user.controller.ts)
app.post("/users", async (req, res) => { ... })

// 4. Service (user.service.ts)
class UserService { ... }

// 5. Frontend types (user.types.ts)
interface User { ... }

5 files, all must stay in sync manually.

Entity-First Approach

// Just one file
const user = entity("user", {
  name: string,
  email: string.unique(),
})

1 file, everything else is derived.

Benefits

1. No Drift - Types can't get out of sync
2. Less Code - 80% reduction in boilerplate
3. Faster Changes - Change once, updates everywhere
4. Type Safety - Compile-time error catching

Next Steps

• Fields Overview
• Defining Entities