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Yboard uses Neon serverless Postgres, which supports database branching — creating isolated copies of your database for development, testing, and preview deployments.

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What is a database branch?

A database branch is a copy-on-write clone of your database at a specific point in time. Each branch has its own connection string and can be modified independently without affecting other branches. This is similar to Git branches but for your database.

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Creating a branch

Branches are created through the Yboard dashboard or API:
  • From the dashboard — Use the Database section of your app to create a new branch from an existing one.
  • Via the CLI — Running yboard init creates your first database branch automatically.
  • Via the API — Call the createBranch action with a project ID, branch name, and parent branch ID.
Branch creation runs as an asynchronous workflow. You can optionally specify a commitHash to branch from a specific point in time.

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Branch limits

Each organization has a branch limit based on their subscription: The default maximum is 25 branches per organization. Creating a branch when at the limit returns an error. Check your current usage from the dashboard or via the getBranchUsage action.

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Deleting a branch

Remove branches you no longer need to stay within your limits:
  • Dashboard — Navigate to the branch and click Delete.
  • API — Call deleteBranch with the project ID and branch ID.
Deleting a branch is permanent and cannot be undone.

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Executing SQL

You can run SQL statements against any branch:
SQL is executed as a transaction — all statements succeed or all are rolled back.

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Schema migrations

Yboard can generate and run schema migrations between branches using AI:
  1. Diff detection — Compares schemas between a source branch and a target branch.
  2. Migration generation — Uses AI to generate idempotent SQL migration statements (with CREATE IF NOT EXISTS, DROP IF EXISTS, etc.).
  3. Execution — Runs the generated statements against the target branch.
  4. Error recovery — If a migration fails, AI analyzes the error and generates fix statements.
This powers the preview deployment workflow: when you deploy a preview, Yboard automatically migrates the preview branch’s schema to match your development branch.

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Inspecting your database

From the Database Viewer in the dashboard, you can:
  • Browse tables and their schemas.
  • View row data with pagination.
  • Inspect triggers and functions.
  • See connection details (Project ID, Branch ID, connection URLs).

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Database quotas

Resource usage is tracked per organization and enforced based on your subscription: Free-tier users receive a fraction of the subscribed quotas (scaled by a 0.2x factor). See Account & Subscriptions for plan-specific limits.

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Overuse pricing

If you exceed your plan’s included quotas: