The Supabase Alternative Built Natively for AI (Powabase)
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Transcript
00:00:00This is PowerBase. It's a Postgres database, a RAG engine, and an agentic workflow builder,
00:00:06all combined into one unified backend. It's the ultimate backend as a service for modern web apps
00:00:12that rely heavily on AI features like vector databases, RAG pipelines, or AI agentic workflows.
00:00:19So in this video, we'll take a closer look at PowerBase, see how it works, and we're going to
00:00:24test it out by building a really cool retro style AI-assisted product website. It's going to be a
00:00:29lot of fun, so let's dive into it. So PowerBase.ai, not to be confused with PowerBase.com, which is,
00:00:40I don't know what that is, is a new backend as a service platform that really is a one-stop-shop
00:00:46solution for modern AI applications. So picture this, you're building an app, but you need a database,
00:00:51maybe even a vector database, and now you decide you want to build a RAG pipeline based on your
00:00:57organization's internal documents, and now maybe you want to create a UI chatbot that can answer
00:01:02questions based on your RAG setup. You could build all of those things as standalone services,
00:01:08but then it gets messy when you have to connect them all. You need to hook your database to your RAG,
00:01:13and then build an agentic workflow for your chatbot. It all gets very complicated really fast.
00:01:19So PowerBase is meant to make your life easier by providing one unified platform for all of these
00:01:24things. Because it extends SuperBase open source foundation, it uses Postgres as the single source
00:01:30of truth for absolutely everything, and that's why you can use PG vector as your primary vector database
00:01:36as well. And because your standard relational data and your new vector embeddings live inside the exact
00:01:42same Postgres engine, they share the exact same ACID transactional safety. So if a database transaction
00:01:48rolls back, the vector update rolls back with it as well. And it also integrates an agentic workflow
00:01:54builder right into the same back end, giving you a visual node based canvas directly inside your
00:02:00dashboard. It allows you to map out deterministic guardrails and hard business rules or setting strict
00:02:06execution limits while still allowing the LLM to dynamically call tools and reason through tasks.
00:02:12So all of that sounds great, but let's test it out and see how it actually works. So once you create your
00:02:17account, you're eligible to get $20 of PowerBase credits for free once you answer a simple questionnaire.
00:02:24And once inside the dashboard, we can see that it looks very, very similar to Supabase,
00:02:29but with the additional sections dedicated to all of the AI features. So a few days ago, I found this
00:02:35super cool computer hardware product catalog from the 80s on the internet archive, which features so many
00:02:41fascinating old pieces of tech. So I decided to take this catalog and build a retro style product website
00:02:48with an AI chatbot that can give me product recommendations based on this catalog. And the
00:02:54internet archive page already has a TXT file, which includes the entire text of the PDF catalog
00:03:00scraped with OCR. So we can use this text file as the data source we will ingest in our RAG pipeline.
00:03:06So to start this project off, I just have a simple folder with a picture of an old Macintosh computer
00:03:13and a reference image of what I want the website to resemble. And then I also have the text file that
00:03:18we just downloaded. And based on PowerBase's own documentation page, they have a handy start guide
00:03:24how to use it with CloudCode. They don't have a skill yet, but if we provide the coding agent with our
00:03:29base URL and a secret key and a reference to the docs, then CloudCode can basically figure out the rest.
00:03:36They do say that they are working on a skill for this project, but as of this recording, the skill is not yet
00:03:41available. So we'll just stick to their manual instructions. And for the prompt, I'm basically telling
00:03:47CloudCode that I want to build a retro product shop with an AI chatbot, and I'm asking it to use the
00:03:53reference images for design. And I have also provided it with a base URL and the secret key in a separate
00:04:00environment file. And lastly, I provide it with a URL to PowerBase's docs, just in case,
00:04:05and let CloudCode do its thing. And a few minutes later, we see that CloudCode has successfully
00:04:11extracted the catalog data from our source. And it has also created a knowledge base of our catalog.
00:04:18And a few moments later, we see that CloudCode has now successfully completed the task.
00:04:23And not only that, but it also did a test run with our AI chatbot to see if everything is working
00:04:28properly. And we can also see that updated here on the PowerBase dashboard. So everything is looking good.
00:04:35So now let's see how the website actually looks. Oh my God, this looks so good.
00:04:42Wow. It's honestly a lot better than I expected. Look at that retro theme. CloudCode has done such
00:04:48a great job with the design, I have to say. But the most important thing is the chatbot
00:04:53or the clerk, as it is called here. And as we can see here, it gives us some sample prompts we can ask.
00:05:00So let's try to see what it recommends for storing 300 floppy disks. And would you look at that? It gives
00:05:06us a very nice detailed answer. And as we can see here, it recommends either a storage binder or a plastic
00:05:13disk box. And it even lists the prices and everything. So that is pretty cool. By the way,
00:05:19I noticed 30% of our audience is Gen Z. So let me know in the comments if you know what a floppy disk is.
00:05:26All right. Let's try a custom query now. I want a strong enough computer at home that can play
00:05:33Pac-Man. What can you recommend and what are the prices? And look at that. This is interesting. It says
00:05:39it cannot find any reference to Pac-Man in their catalog. So this is a common characteristic of RAG
00:05:45engines where it tries to stay strictly within the bounds of the context of the data given,
00:05:50which is a very good thing. But it does mention a similar game that it did find in the catalog,
00:05:55which is similar to Pac-Man. And then it finally gives us these nice recommendations for gaming
00:06:01computers. And this is so funny. If gaming is your main goal, but budget matters, then we can choose
00:06:08the Interact family computer for 500 bucks. But if you want the best graphics and sound,
00:06:14then you got to go with Texas Instruments TI-99. It's a showstopper and even comes with its own 13-inch
00:06:22color monitor. Color monitor, yo. Let's go. Shut up and take my money. So the website looks absolutely
00:06:30stunning and the chatbot is working as expected. So I'm pretty satisfied with this result. One last thing
00:06:35I want to check is the power base dashboard. And here in the run section, we can see all of the sessions
00:06:42our chatbot has conducted with all the detailed responses. So this is a good way to keep track of
00:06:48how your users are actually using the chatbot. So there you have it, folks. That is power base in a
00:06:53nutshell. Honestly, I'm super impressed with this platform. It has so many cool AI features and the
00:06:59setup was so easy and the rag pipeline worked seamlessly. So I would say this is a perfect backend as a service.
00:07:07If you need to get an MVP version of your AI app out there as quickly as possible. Power base basically
00:07:13provides you with all the necessary tools so you don't have to worry about the plumbing side of hooking
00:07:18everything together. So well done, power base. But what do you folks think about power base? Have you tried it?
00:07:24Will you use it? Let us know in the comment section down below. And folks, if you like these types of
00:07:29technical breakdowns, let me know by smashing that like button underneath the video. And also don't
00:07:34forget to subscribe to our channel. This has been Andres from Betterstack and I will see you in the next videos.
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