Chase Foster

Just won a customer back from a competitor. 6 months ago, they picked a competitor -- one with $30M+ in funding. A few months later, that competitor laid off the entire team who was implementing their system. Customer was stuck with a half-built system and nobody to call or even work on the project... Guess who they came back to? 🙂 Most funded SaaS companies are unprofitable, and many are zombies. Their investors want unicorns, so they over-hire, over-promise, and swing for the fences. When the math catches up, customers are the ones holding the bag. Carbon won't be a billion-dollar company next year. But if we keep 100% of our employees and 100% of our customers, we will build the kind of business that actually compounds, NOT one that flames out chasing a valuation.

SAP and Oracle charge manufacturing companies six figures a year for ERP software that was designed for the fax machine era. If you run a factory, or build software for people who do, this might be the most important open source project you see this year. It's called Carbon -- an open-source ERP, MES, and QMS built specifically for modern manufacturing. API-first, type-safe, real-time, with an MCP server so AI agents can talk to it directly. Here's what Carbon replaces: → ERP -- full enterprise resource planning with nested BoM, MRP, accounting, and capacity planning → MES -- manufacturing execution system for the shop floor, tracking what's actually being produced → QMS -- quality management system for traceability and compliance → configurator -- built in, so you can sell configure-to-order products without a separate tool → simulation engine for capacity planning and what-if analysis → MCP client/server -- ask Claude or any AI agent to query your inventory, create purchase orders, or check BoM status through natural language Here's the technical stack that makes it actually modern: → full-stack type safety from PostgreSQL schema to React UI → realtime database subscriptions via Supabase → attribute-based access control plus row-level security → role-based access for customers, suppliers, and employees all in one system → webhooks and a public API so you can build your own apps on top of it → custom fields on every entity without forking the codebase Here's why it matters: Manufacturing software has been stuck in 2005 for two decades. The incumbents charge enormous licensing fees, lock customers into proprietary databases, and make integration nearly impossible. Carbon gives small and mid-sized manufacturers an escape hatch, and gives developers a codebase they can extend. built for complex assembly, contract manufacturing, and configure-to-order. 1.8K GitHub stars. 3,724 commits. 18 contributors. actively shipping. 100% open source. AGPL license with commercial licensing available. (link in the comments)

@ethan_avalon Let me know when you do! would love to check it out!

Should I begin to open source SLATE?

we're about to make two new job offers for carbon. we weren't sure about either at first. then they worked like crazy with open source contributions and gave us no choice. now we're confident that we've got A players. open source ftw.

@mattdykema Host it in your own cloud server

If you're building internal manufacturing tools are you hosting them on your own server or storing your proprietary data on someone else's

@barbinbrad High standards and no ego about your own work. That’s what makes you one of the best

vibe coded something tonight, realized it was trash, threw it all away. 0 LoC.

here’s a highly requested feature: share a computer between operators without individual logins. we’re calling it console mode.

why should I pay $30/month for an ERP system when I can pay anthropic $200/month to make a shittier version of it for myself?

@CalebChamberla6 @parthingle_x The only one who is self-funded. We don’t have to price for investors

@parthingle_x What ERP costs $30/month?

New customer today! We're excited to partner with Witty Machines (witty-machines.com)

Really excited to announce this one -- more details coming soon! More and more innovators are realizing that if you don't own your source code, you don't truly own your manufacturing process!

@barbinbrad Let’s gooo!!

new sales setting @ChaseFosterMfg so we don't have to hit the markup button every time. now it auto updates on any change

weekend project 1: people want to be able to markup quotes based on different facets (different markup percent for raw material vs inventoried parts vs labor)

This customer does not know how to code at all, but he built a clock-in app for his employees and it syncs perfectly with Carbon. This kind of thing is going to become easier and easier, and it’s why we built Carbon.

@barbinbrad Everything is a dominos pizza tracker!

🚨 domino's pizza tracker css just dropped

@barbinbrad Let’s goo!!!

i know of two companies that have built this for themselves. one was named the most innovative company in north america by fast company. the other is a foundation for building end-to-end manufacturing systems.

Some exciting news for Carbon. @ChaseFosterMfg left his crazy paying job at Google to go full time on Carbon. Chase is going to be the CEO and handle the business side of things, which will allow me to do what I love— focus on the product, our customers and the technology.

@will_alverson 👀 👀

I have a lot of very exciting news I will be able to share more about in the coming days/ weeks Hitting the ground running. Reindustrialization is inevitable.