Databases

Where everything your users create gets remembered.

Accounts immediately raise a second question: where does everyone's stuff go? Sign-ups, saved items, submissions, settings, they all need a permanent home. That home is a database: the part of your app that remembers.

Two beginner-friendly options dominate, and they organize information differently. Supabase works like a spreadsheet: neat tables, every row the same shape, tables linkable to each other (a member connects to all their RSVPs). Tidy, predictable, easy to picture:

Firebase is more like a box of index cards: each “document” holds whatever fields you like, cards can nest inside cards, and no two need to match. Flexible early on, harder to keep tidy as a project grows:

(The vocabulary, if you want it: Supabase is a relational database, Firebase a document database.)

Once accounts and a database coexist, the pattern that organizes everything is simple: every row points back at a person. Tasks belong to users. Recipes belong to users. RSVPs belong to members. Tell the agent things like “when someone saves a recipe, store it linked to their account,” and the account becomes the anchor everything hangs off.

Our recommendation is Supabase, and the next chapter sets it up. The spreadsheet mental model is easier to hold in your head, agents work with it exceptionally well, and the structure stays clean as you grow.

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