Compared with next-forge
TurbineKit is a spiritual successor to next-forge. The same Turborepo and Next.js base, with fewer moving parts, free tools, and a CLI that writes only what you pick.
| next-forge | TurbineKit | |
|---|---|---|
| Apps | 7 | 1 app, plus docs |
| Built around | Clerk, BaseHub, Liveblocks, Knock, Arcjet, Svix… | Free and open tools; paid services stay optional |
| Database | Prisma | Drizzle, PGlite for tests and local work |
| Sign-in | Clerk | better-auth, with OAuth for MCP clients |
| API | A separate app | One definition: REST, MCP and OpenAPI |
| Choosing features | Delete by hand | The CLI removes what you don’t pick |
One app instead of seven
In TurbineKit, one Next.js app holds the site, sign-in, the signed-in app, the REST API and the MCP server. The API docs are a second app, and only if you pick them. Fewer apps means fewer deploys, fewer environment files, and less for an agent to learn before it can help.
Free tools first
Every service in TurbineKit is optional and off until its keys are set, and each one has a free fallback: a dev mailbox for email, the local disk for files, PGlite for the database. The first build needs no account anywhere.
Sign-in and the API
better-auth runs in your app and your database: email and password, Google and GitHub, passkeys, two-factor, API keys, and OAuth 2.1 so Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor can connect to your MCP server. Each operation is defined once and becomes a REST endpoint, an MCP tool and an OpenAPI entry, with the same permissions everywhere.
When next-forge fits better
next-forge comes wired to the services it is built around. If you want Clerk, a CMS with BaseHub, real-time collaboration with Liveblocks, or Storybook on day one, next-forge gives you those, and TurbineKit doesn’t.
Run one command. The CLI asks the rest, and your agent takes it from there.
pnpm create turbinekit my-appSee the prompt
Paste it into an agent that can run commands, such as Claude Code, Codex or Cursor.
Create a new TurbineKit project with me.
TurbineKit (https://turbinekit.dev) is an open-source Turborepo and Next.js starter. Its CLI, create-turbinekit, needs Node.js 24 and pnpm 10 (run `corepack enable` once).
1. Run `pnpm dlx create-turbinekit --help` to see its options.
2. Ask me its questions one at a time, with their defaults: the folder, the product name, one sentence about the product, the company or legal name, the contact email, the languages and the modules. Skip what I have already told you.
3. The CLI only asks questions in an interactive terminal, so run it with my answers as options and `--yes`. Show me the command before you run it.
4. In the new folder, read AGENTS.md. Then do "1. Minimal setup" in SETUP.md, and tick each box you finish.
5. Tell me the URL of the running app, and which services SETUP.md lists next.No sign-up, no API keys. Needs Node.js 24 and pnpm 10.