Why we built Simulacrum

The boilerplate tax

Every serious team rebuilds authentication, roles, payments wiring, email, and admin tooling. Tutorials do not compose; forks diverge; onboarding new engineers means reading multiple READMEs.

SaaS-only is not enough

Many paid starters assume a single product shape—usually SaaS. Real agencies and indie hackers ship storefronts, blogs, documentation sites, and landing pages in the same quarter. Buying separate starters for each shape multiplies maintenance and mental overhead.

The multi-purpose bet

Simulacrum standardizes templates (seven verticals), adapters (four database stacks), and better-auth + RBAC behind one CLI. You pick a template and flags; the generator applies opinionated defaults you can trace in one repo history.

What success looks like

Success is measured in calendar time to a production deploy: fewer integration spikes, fewer “glue” sprints, and a team that recognizes the same /admin and auth patterns regardless of client vertical.