Description
Manufacturing software has long worked the same way: commercial ERP quotes run high, rollouts are measured in years, connecting your own MES or customizing anything gets billed per interface, and switching vendors means your data is locked in their format. Carbon is aimed squarely at that — ERP, MES and QMS in one system, with sales, purchasing and inventory in ERP, shop-floor execution in MES, and inspections and non-conformances in QMS, all sharing the same master data rather than being reconciled between packages.
Extensibility is a design premise rather than a selling point: any record takes custom fields, functionality is exposed through an API and webhooks, and the repository ships example projects showing how to build your own applications on top. An MCP client and server are built in as an AI-native integration surface.
The stack is React Router and TypeScript on the front end with Supabase (Postgres plus row-level security) behind it, and Rust for geometry — FCL for collision detection and OpenCASCADE for CAD, which is the compute-heavy part behind scheduling and the product configurator. Permissions go deep: attribute-based access control, row-level security, customer/supplier/employee roles and composable user groups.
Licensing is AGPL-3.0 open core: the main codebase is open, but the
ERP: sales, purchasing, inventory, items and accounting in one system, with general ledger, journals and third-party financial sync.
MES shop-floor execution: jobs reach workstations and operations advance along a dependency graph, with operators issuing material and reporting completions and scrap back into the same data.
QMS: incoming and in-process inspections, non-conformance handling and corrective and preventive actions, without bolting on a separate quality system.
MRP and capacity planning: material requirements explode through multi-level BoMs, and scheduling runs against real resource capacity rather than assumption.
Full traceability: lot and serial level tracking, so a problem on a finished unit traces back to the incoming material batch.
Nested BoMs and configurator: multi-level bills of material and product configuration, which is what configure-to-order and complex assembly need.
Custom fields: any record can be extended without schema changes or side tables for a handful of business-specific attributes.
API and webhooks: the platform is built API-first so you can build applications on top of it, with example projects provided and events pushed out over webhooks.
MCP integration: a built-in MCP client and server give AI tools a direct surface for reading and writing operational data.
Fine-grained permissions: attribute-based access control, row-level security, customer/supplier/employee roles and composable user groups, with full-stack type safety from database to UI.
Rust geometry kernel: FCL collision detection and OpenCASCADE CAD handling put the heavy geometric computation in Rust rather than in the front end.
Realtime subscriptions: database changes push straight to the interface, so the shop floor and the office see the same state at the same moment.
Extensibility is a design premise rather than a selling point: any record takes custom fields, functionality is exposed through an API and webhooks, and the repository ships example projects showing how to build your own applications on top. An MCP client and server are built in as an AI-native integration surface.
The stack is React Router and TypeScript on the front end with Supabase (Postgres plus row-level security) behind it, and Rust for geometry — FCL for collision detection and OpenCASCADE for CAD, which is the compute-heavy part behind scheduling and the product configurator. Permissions go deep: attribute-based access control, row-level security, customer/supplier/employee roles and composable user groups.
Licensing is AGPL-3.0 open core: the main codebase is open, but the
packages/ee directory and files marked .ee require a commercial license, and internal production use means either open-sourcing your modifications under AGPL or buying a commercial license — worth reading closely before committing.Features
ERP: sales, purchasing, inventory, items and accounting in one system, with general ledger, journals and third-party financial sync.
MES shop-floor execution: jobs reach workstations and operations advance along a dependency graph, with operators issuing material and reporting completions and scrap back into the same data.
QMS: incoming and in-process inspections, non-conformance handling and corrective and preventive actions, without bolting on a separate quality system.
MRP and capacity planning: material requirements explode through multi-level BoMs, and scheduling runs against real resource capacity rather than assumption.
Full traceability: lot and serial level tracking, so a problem on a finished unit traces back to the incoming material batch.
Nested BoMs and configurator: multi-level bills of material and product configuration, which is what configure-to-order and complex assembly need.
Custom fields: any record can be extended without schema changes or side tables for a handful of business-specific attributes.
API and webhooks: the platform is built API-first so you can build applications on top of it, with example projects provided and events pushed out over webhooks.
MCP integration: a built-in MCP client and server give AI tools a direct surface for reading and writing operational data.
Fine-grained permissions: attribute-based access control, row-level security, customer/supplier/employee roles and composable user groups, with full-stack type safety from database to UI.
Rust geometry kernel: FCL collision detection and OpenCASCADE CAD handling put the heavy geometric computation in Rust rather than in the front end.
Realtime subscriptions: database changes push straight to the interface, so the shop floor and the office see the same state at the same moment.
