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You’ll need:
  • Node.js 18 or newer
  • Access to your Postgres database (Supabase, RDS, PlanetScale, or self-hosted)
1

Install the CLI

2

Log in

Your browser opens — sign in or create your account there, then come back to the terminal.
On a fresh account, create a project first: ardent project create my-app. If you already have exactly one project and connector, Ardent selects them for you.
3

Get your connection string

Save it in your shell so the next two commands can reuse it:
Keep the single quotes — passwords often contain characters your shell would eat.Where to find it, and the one thing that usually blocks the next step:
In your Supabase dashboard, open Connect and copy the direct connection string — not the pooler one. The pooler can’t do replication, and preflight will fail on it. Details: Supabase setup.
4

Preflight your database

Preflight checks whether Ardent can branch this database. It creates nothing and stores no credentials — it just tells you what, if anything, to fix.If a check fails:
  • Missing grants — preflight prints the SQL. Run it on your database, then run preflight again.
  • wal level fails — logical replication is off. See your provider tab above.
  • “Already connected” — this database has a connector. Run ardent connector list.
5

Connect your database

When preflight passes:
This copies your data into Ardent once. Small databases take minutes; large ones take longer. Setup runs on Ardent’s servers — if your terminal disconnects or you interrupt the command, nothing is lost. Run ardent connector retry-setup <name> and it picks up where it left off.
The new connector becomes your active connector automatically.
6

Create a branch and use it

That’s an isolated copy of your database, created in seconds. Prove it — connect and query:
Real data, real Postgres, and nothing you do here touches your source database.

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What’s next

Give it to a coding agent

Install the ardent-cli skill and let Claude Code or Cursor test migrations and schema changes on a branch.

A branch per pull request

Create and clean up branches automatically in CI.

Branch-based local dev

Point your local stack at branches instead of a shared staging database.
Branches suspend on their own when idle, so there’s no cleanup pressure — create one per task and move on.