Although web frameworks are abundant and sophisticated, they’re not built with microservices architectures in mind and often struggle to scale across large fleets of servers. As a result, many startups and enterprise teams hand‑roll their own distributed platforms—there simply isn’t a clear winner in this space. Unlike the more unified JavaScript ecosystem, the backend world remains highly fragmented by a multitude of languages and tools.
When organizations venture into this territory, they can suffer—and even endure a 100×—productivity drop. At first, they may shrug it off—after all, they can hire more expensive engineers—but in practice, lengthy rewrites or “next‑generation platforms” can grind an entire company to a halt, costing market leaders their competitive edge.
Conceived in the author’s mind for over ten years, 1Backend aspires to be the operating system for distributed backend applications—offering a unified, scalable foundation that finally brings cohesion and efficiency to a fragmented landscape.
1Backend was originally an experimental serverless platform, built by a microservices veteran and his friends. It gained interest back in 2017, but development paused as the team moved on to other ventures.
Years later, while building an on-premise AI platform, the original creator realized there was still no microservices backend that fully matched their vision.
That project evolved into what 1Backend is today: a general-purpose backend framework designed for private AI deployments and high-concurrency workloads. It also includes a ChatGPT-inspired interface for user interaction, along with a network-accessible API for machines—but at its core, 1Backend is built to be a robust, flexible foundation for modern backend systems.
- On-premise ChatGPT alternative – Run your AI models locally through a UI, CLI or API.
- A "microservices-first" web framework – Think of it like Angular for the backend, built for large, scalable enterprise codebases.
- Out-of-the-box services – Includes built-in file uploads, downloads, user management, and more.
- Infrastructure simplification – Acts as a container orchestrator, reverse proxy, and more.
- Multi-database support – Comes with its own built-in ORM.
- AI integration – Works with LlamaCpp, StableDiffusion, and other AI platforms.
Easiest way to run 1Backend is with Docker. Install Docker if you don't have it. Step into repo root and:
docker compose upto run the platform in foreground. It stops running if you Ctrl+C it. If you want to run it in the background:
docker compose up -dAlso see this page for other ways to launch 1Backend.
Check out the examples folder or the relevant documentation to learn how to easily build testable, scalable microservices on 1Backend.
Now that the 1Backend is running you have a few options to interact with it.
You can go to http://127.0.0.1:3901 and log in with username 1backend and password changeme and start using it just like you would use ChatGPT.
Click on the big "AI" button and download a model first. Don't worry, this model will be persisted across restarts (see volumes in the docker-compose.yaml).
For brevity the below example assumes you went to the UI and downloaded a model already. (That could also be done in code with the clients but then the code snippet would be longer).
Let's do a sync prompting in JS. In your project run
npm init -y && jq '. + { "type": "module" }' package.json > temp.json && mv temp.json package.json
npm i -s @1backend/clientMake sure your package.json contains "type": "module", put the following snippet into index.js
import { UserSvcApi, PromptSvcApi, Configuration } from "@1backend/client";
async function testDrive() {
let userService = new UserSvcApi();
let loginResponse = await userService.login({
body: {
slug: "1backend",
password: "changeme",
},
});
const promptSvc = new PromptSvcApi(
new Configuration({
apiKey: loginResponse.token?.token,
})
);
// Make sure there is a model downloaded and active at this point,
// either through the UI or programmatically .
let promptRsp = await promptSvc.prompt({
body: {
sync: true,
prompt: "Is a cat an animal? Just answer with yes or no please.",
},
});
console.log(promptRsp);
}
testDrive();and run
$ node index.js
{
prompt: {
createdAt: '2025-02-03T16:53:09.883792389Z',
id: 'prom_emaAv7SlM2',
prompt: 'Is a cat an animal? Just answer with yes or no please.',
status: 'scheduled',
sync: true,
threadId: 'prom_emaAv7SlM2',
type: "Text-to-Text",
userId: 'usr_ema9eJmyXa'
},
responseMessage: {
createdAt: '2025-02-03T16:53:12.128062235Z',
id: 'msg_emaAzDnLtq',
text: '\n' +
'I think the question is asking about dogs, so we should use "Dogs are animals". But what about cats?',
threadId: 'prom_emaAv7SlM2'
}
}Depending on your system it might take a while for the AI to respond. In case it takes long check the backend logs if it's processing, you should see something like this:
1backend-1backend-1 | {"time":"2024-11-27T17:27:14.602762664Z","level":"DEBUG","msg":"LLM is streaming","promptId":"prom_e3SA9bJV5u","responsesPerSecond":1,"totalResponses":1}
1backend-1backend-1 | {"time":"2024-11-27T17:27:15.602328634Z","level":"DEBUG","msg":"LLM is streaming","promptId":"prom_e3SA9bJV5u","responsesPerSecond":4,"totalResponses":9}Install oo to get started (at the moment you need Go to install it):
go install github.com/1backend/1backend/cli/oo@latestTo make the installed binary available on your system:
$ go env | grep GOPATH
GOPATH='/home/crufter/go' # this will be different for you
# Open your bashrc file with any editor
vim ~/.bashrc
# And place your go bin folder there
export PATH=$PATH:/home/crufter/go/bin
# Please keep in mind your username won't be crufter probably, change it to yours :)$ oo env ls
ENV NAME SELECTED URL DESCRIPTION REACHABLE
local * http://127.0.0.1:11337 true$ oo login 1backend changeme
$ oo whoami
slug: 1backend
id: usr_e9WSQYiJc9
roles:
- user-svc:admin$ oo post /prompt-svc/prompt --sync=true --prompt="Is a cat an animal? Just answer with yes or no please."
# see example response above...1Backend is a microservices-based AI platform, the seeds of which began taking shape in 2013 while I was at Hailo, an Uber competitor. The idea stuck with me and kept evolving over the years – including during my time at Micro, a microservices platform company. I assumed someone else would eventually build it, but with the AI boom and the wave of AI apps we’re rolling out, I’ve realized it’s time to build it myself.
See the Running the daemon page to help you get started.
For articles about the built-in services see the Built-in services page. For comprehensive API docs see the 1Backend API page.
We have temporarily discontinued the distribution of the desktop version. Please refer to this page for alternative methods to run the software.
1Backend is licensed under AGPL-3.0.