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SliceFlow

Introduction

Every great software idea starts with a spark of inspiration. But turning that spark into a fully-fledged, production-ready application often begins with a mountain of tedious, repetitive work. Before you can write a single line of code for your unique features, you have to build the foundation: authentication, database connectivity, logging, background jobs, and a consistent development environment.

This foundational work, while critical, doesn’t get you any closer to building the product you’ve envisioned.

Your Head Start for Modern APIs

This is the problem that SliceFlow was built to solve.

SliceFlow is a feature-complete, production-ready template for rapidly building modern APIs and SaaS applications. It implements a Vertical Slice Architecture (also known as Request-Endpoint-Response), a modern approach that organizes code by feature instead of technical layers.

Our core philosophy is built on simplicity and pragmatism. The choice of powerful tools like FastEndpoints, Entity Framework Core, and PostgreSQL is opinionated. However, the code itself is written to be un-opinionated, with minimal abstraction. We believe you should use the full power of these excellent libraries directly, rather than hiding them behind leaky abstractions. SliceFlow wires them together in a way that nudges you toward the pit of success.

Who Is This For?

SliceFlow is designed for:

  • Developers who value speed and pragmatism, and want to get a product to market quickly without accumulating technical debt.
  • Teams that prefer feature-focused development over debating architectural layers. The vertical slice approach keeps you focused on delivering value.
  • Frontend developers who want a powerful, statically-typed backend that is easy to reason about and feels similar to modern JavaScript frameworks.
  • Anyone who believes that a good foundation should be simple, un-magical, and get out of your way.

What’s in the Box?

SliceFlow comes with a complete, integrated solution for the most common challenges in modern API development:

  • Endpoints: A clean, fast, and scalable API structure using the REPR pattern, powered by FastEndpoints. No more bloated controllers.
  • Authentication: A secure, stateless JWT-based authentication system that integrates with external identity providers, with automatic user provisioning.
  • Permissions: A flexible, code-first permission system that automatically syncs with your database.
  • Database: Pre-configured for PostgreSQL with Entity Framework Core, including automatic migrations and data auditing.
  • Background Jobs: A robust system for running long-running tasks asynchronously using RabbitMQ, ensuring your API remains fast and responsive.
  • Caching: A powerful hybrid caching strategy (in-memory and distributed Redis) to maximize your application’s performance.
  • Logging & Health: A complete observability stack with structured logging, metrics, and distributed tracing powered by Serilog and OpenTelemetry, all visualized in a pre-configured Grafana dashboard.
  • Error Handling: A multi-layered error handling strategy that provides helpful, structured responses to clients while keeping your application secure.
  • Dockerized Environment: A one-command setup for a complete, consistent development and production environment, including all necessary infrastructure.
  • Payments (In Progress): Integration with Stripe for handling subscriptions and payments, providing a complete billing solution.
  • Full-Featured Frontend Template: A companion Nuxt 3 template that builds on this API as a foundation, including a pre-built admin dashboard, user profiles, and more, giving you a complete, end-to-end starting point for your SaaS application.

SliceFlow is more than a template; it’s a productivity multiplier. It’s the culmination of best practices and real-world experience, distilled into a foundation that lets you build better, faster, and with more confidence.

Let’s explore the philosophy that drives this approach.