Neon

Neon is serverless Postgres, and a driver behind db and backup. Your records live in a Neon project per region, and Neon's point-in-time restore and branches give backup a fast way to run restore drills. Pick Neon for a Next.js app on Vercel, or whenever you want managed Postgres without running servers.

db:
  driver: neon

backup:
  driver: neon-pitr

Before you start

1. Create a Neon project for each region your users are in, and check that Neon offers a region for each store you need.
2. Copy each project's connection string and store it in your secrets manager.
3. Review the project's history retention: it sets how far back point-in-time restore can go.

Configure

db:
  driver: neon
  regions:
    us: secret:DB_US        # suggested name; Neon connection string, US
    eu: secret:DB_EU        # suggested name; Neon connection string, EU
    in: secret:DB_IN        # suggested name; Neon connection string, India
backup:
  rpo: 15m
  rto: 1h
  keep: 35d
  drill: { every: 30d, to: scratch }

Point-in-time recovery comes from the Neon db driver's capability profile; there is no separate backup driver to set.

Use it

import { auth, db } from "mainsdk";

export async function GET(req: Request) {
  const session = await auth.require(req);
  return Response.json(await db.orders.for(session.user).list({ limit: 20 }));
}

import { runDrill } from "mainsdk/backup";

const result = await runDrill({ driver, declared, app: "my-app", at: new Date(), to: "scratch" });   // restores into scratch, never production

mainsdk drill restore --to scratch runs the same drill from the command line and signs the evidence.

Local development and testing

Use SQLite or a Neon development branch locally. createTestApp() from @mainsdk/testing runs db on its in-memory fake, and chaos.on("db", { outage: true }) simulates an outage. Run mainsdk drill restore in CI to test restores against Neon itself.

What MainSDK adds on top

• Owner scope, region routing, field labels and idempotent writes, as on every db driver.
• mainsdk check reads Neon's restore window and fails with the gap when it cannot meet your RPO.
• Restore drills into a Neon branch, timed against your RTO and signed as evidence.

See Data and records and Backups and restore drills.

Limits and notes

• The neon driver comes with the db spec (phase 1); neon-pitr comes with the backup-restore-evidence spec (phase 3, milestone 1.2).
• MainSDK never runs or stores backups; Neon does.

Swap to or from it

db:
  driver: neon   # was postgres

FAQ

Is Neon just Postgres? Yes. Your Postgres schema and Prisma or Drizzle migrations work unchanged.

Can a drill touch my production branch? No. Drills restore only into a new branch or scratch database.

Next

• Data and records and Backups and restore drills
• Postgres, Supabase and Vercel