Answers
Every question, in one place.
40 answers on what Minimal is, what it reads, what it holds of yours, what it costs and what you keep if you leave. The search stays with you down the page.
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What is Minimal?
Data access infrastructure over a database you already run. It reads your schema and serves every table as a REST endpoint, exposes the same tables as MCP tools, and lets you scope every tool to an identity. It is not a database, and your rows never leave yours.
Do I need to know what MCP is?
No, but you will by the end of one session. It is the protocol an AI assistant uses to discover and call a tool it is allowed to use. Minimal runs the server for you; the part worth understanding is which tools you expose on it.
What can I try without talking to anyone?
Everything that is live. Each product opens with a free tier, no card required, and a free project is never paused. Sign up at selectstar.wtf and point it at a database.
Is this a prototyping tool?
No. It builds against your production database from the first screen, and the APIs underneath are the same ones you would call from anywhere else. There is no separate step where you rebuild it properly.
Do I need to know SQL?
For Ask Studio, no. That is the point. If you can say what you want to know, you can ask it — and you can see what it read to answer you.
How long does the first useful thing take?
Four CRUD endpoints exist five seconds after the connection is made. A scheduled agent with an identity scoped to one tool takes under thirty minutes.
How it works
Which databases work?
Fifteen engines tested, including ClickHouse, Postgres, MySQL and MariaDB, plus flat files like CSV, Parquet, XLS, JSON and NDJSON. Whatever you already run is most likely already supported.
Can I write my own logic, or only use the Auto API?
Custom API is the escape hatch. Anything the Auto API does not cover — joins, business rules, a response shaped for one consumer — you write there, or describe in English and have Minimal write. Either way it is versioned, rollback-able and logged like everything else on the platform.
How is App Studio different from Agent Studio?
Same pipeline, different ending. App Studio produces something a person opens; Agent Studio produces something that works on its own. Many teams run both on the same data.
Which assistants can connect?
Eight are wired today, including Claude, ChatGPT and Codex. Anything that speaks MCP connects over OAuth, so the list grows with the protocol rather than with our roadmap.
Can an agent write, or only read?
Both, and that is exactly what the identity is for. Write access is something you grant per action rather than a mode you switch on.
What about very large tables?
ClickHouse support exists precisely because of them. Questions run where the data already lives rather than pulling rows somewhere else first.
Your data and your schema
What happens when we add a column on Monday?
The endpoints are read from the schema itself rather than from a copy of it taken on the day you connected. Re-read the source and the new column appears on the endpoints, the MCP tool and anything built on them. Existing consumers keep working — nothing about the old shape is removed by the addition.
Which databases does Minimal support?
Fifteen. Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB and ClickHouse, plus eleven more that speak their protocols: Aurora MySQL, Percona, TimescaleDB, Vitess, TiDB, CockroachDB, Citus, YugabyteDB, SingleStore, StarRocks and RisingWave. Flat files (CSV, Parquet, XLS, JSON and NDJSON) are imported as tables. You do not need to migrate: Minimal reads the database you already run.
Where does my data actually go?
Nowhere, for a database you connect. Queries run against your database through an outbound-only connection and the results are returned. There is no copy, no sync and no warehouse in between. A file you upload is the one exception: it is queued for processing and kept until it has loaded, or for 72 hours at most, then deleted from our S3 storage. You can also host a database with us.
Is it querying a copy of my data?
Not for a database you link: nothing is extracted, synced or cached, and the result of a query is returned, not stored. A database you host with us is held by us. A file you upload is queued for processing and kept until it has loaded, or for 72 hours at most, then deleted from our S3 storage.
Do I have to migrate anything?
No. Every table, view and materialized view is recognised as it stands. No schema is rewritten to suit us and no dump is required.
What does Minimal leave to me?
Authentication for your own users, third-party integrations, and logic unrelated to your database. That work is yours to build, manage and maintain.
Security and access
What do you hold of ours?
No database credentials on our side, no listening port opened in your network, and no copy of the rows of a database you link. If you host a database with us, we hold it; an uploaded file is kept until it has loaded, or 72 hours at most. The connection to a linked database is outbound-only from you to us. The full account is here.
Is every action logged?
Yes. Every call through APIs, MCP, agents and Custom API is on the record with the identity that authorised it, latency and payload size. Traces export to any OpenTelemetry collector on self-hosted, Jaeger included.
How is an agent stopped from reaching something?
A tool outside an identity's scope is hidden, so the agent sees only what it may call and has no refused attempts to review. Permission is a property of the identity, not a setting on the agent.
Can I see everything an identity reaches?
The Access Map draws it: identities, the tools they reach, and the API sources behind those tools, on one diagram with high-reach identities flagged.
Can a change be undone?
Every change to an org, project, Custom API, module or space is versioned. An admin rolls a dangerous one back with a click.
Deployment
Hosted, or on our own hardware?
Both. Free, Pro and Scale are hosted. Enterprise deploys hosted or on-premise, and air-gapped on-premise is available. Minimal Core always runs on your own hardware, with a hosted free tier for trying it.
What does the on-premise install hold?
Metadata only. The installation carries configuration, not your rows.
Can traces go to our own observability stack?
Yes. Traces are exportable to any OpenTelemetry collector on self-hosted, Jaeger included.
Pricing and billing
Do you charge per seat?
Never. Seats are not billed on any plan, and Free is capped at two users as an evaluation limit. Metering is on usage, and each product is bought and priced separately.
What exactly is metered?
Five things: database storage, network, API requests, AI tokens, and the work the product does — agent-hours on Agent Studio, and the equivalent unit on each of the others. All of it is published in the table on the pricing page.
What happens when I pass what is included?
On a paid plan you keep going and pay the published rate: $0.80 a gigabyte of database storage, $0.05 a gigabyte of network, $1 per million API requests, $9 per million AI tokens.
Can I move between plans?
Up or down, whenever. A team on Ask Studio Pro pays for Ask Studio only.
How is Enterprise priced?
Per database connected on Agent, App and Ask Studio, and by quote on Chat Studio. On the three studios it is the tier that can deploy on-premise as well as hosted. API Bay has no enterprise tier; its pricing is the same for everyone.
Leaving
If we stop paying, what do we keep?
An archived project is converted to a portable export — schema, data and configuration in open, documented formats with a manifest. Download is guaranteed: free, unlimited and self-service. No request, no ticket, no payment, no condition. Terms §8.5.
Does an inactive paid project get archived?
No. A project on a paid plan stays live however inactive it is, for as long as the plan is paid. Dormancy applies to free projects only.
Is restoration guaranteed?
No, and we say so plainly. We will attempt to restore an archived project subject to capacity, but the guarantee is the download, not the restore.
How much warning do we get?
At least six notices across the lifecycle of a free project, each one stating the date of the next step — including the exact deletion date and the download link at archival.
Can I delete everything myself?
At any time, and nothing in the dormancy schedule limits that right.
Grants
What is Ostrich?
$30M of Minimal Core licences reserved each year for companies. Each grant is $100K to $300K, sized to need: roughly 100M to 300M requests served in a year. The terms are here.
Is there equity or revenue share?
No equity, no revenue share, nothing taken from you. We ask for your feedback on the product every quarter. A company under the programme does not build a product that competes with Littlebit Labs for seven years.
What is Sparrow?
$1M of cloud credit over 24 months for students, companies with two founders and stealth startups. The credit covers the products live when it is issued and extends to each new one as it opens. Selected teams start on Pro and move to Scale when the work outgrows it. Read the Sparrow terms.
What is Pelican?
A Minimal Core licence, free for qualifying non-profit organisations, renewed on review each year, with no cap on how many organisations qualify. Read the Pelican terms.
Who can apply?
Ostrich is reserved for companies: partnership firms, LLPs and private limited companies. Sparrow is for students, companies with two founders and stealth startups. Pelican is for non-profit organisations.
Nothing matches that. or ask us directly.
Still open? Book a session and ask it in person, or read the Terms — every commitment on this page is written down there.