Governed database, API & deployment access,
built for engineers.
AccessFlow is an open-source access proxy for databases, APIs and CI/CD deployments: every request is reviewable, every approval is traceable, and AI catches the obvious problems before a human ever sees the request. It is the missing middle between the two extremes most teams pick from — shared production credentials, fast, but one mistake is unbounded and there is no record of who did what, or a ticket-driven DBA queue, safe, but slow enough that engineers route around it.
One open-source approval pipeline — databases, APIs and deployments.
Three governance surfaces, one approval pipeline and one audit trail behind all of them. Self-hosted in your own infrastructure — and with a local Ollama analyzer, air-gap friendly. All 12 capabilities →
Databases
Every SQL and NoSQL query is parsed, classified, checked against your own SQL review rules, AI risk-scored, and routed through human review before it reaches production — with dynamic masking, row-level security, and data-classification tags applied to what comes back. Database access governance →
APIs
Outbound REST, SOAP, GraphQL, and gRPC calls flow through the same submit → AI review → approve → execute pipeline, with schema-ingested operation catalogs and connector-level response masking. API access governance →
Deployments
CI/CD releases block on a fail-closed approval gate — freeze windows, audited break-glass, and rollback tracking included — triggered from GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure Pipelines, and more. Deployment approval governance →
One dashboard for approvals — queries, API calls and deployments.
Counters for what is still open, a panel for each thing awaiting your decision, and your own recent requests — every number scoped to what you are allowed to see.
/dashboard — where most users land after sign-in, assembled from panels each of them can reorder or hide.How approval works — from submission to execution, observable at every step.
Every request follows the same predictable path — submitted, AI-analyzed, approved, executed, audited — whether it is a SQL query, an outbound API call, a grouped request, or a CI/CD deployment waiting on its gate.
Submit a request
SQL written in the built-in editor, an outbound API call, or a deployment triggered from CI — the proxy parses and classifies every request the same way.
AI reviews it
Risk score, anti-pattern flags, missing indexes — API calls and deployment plans get the same scoring. The status moves PENDING_AI → PENDING_REVIEW.
Humans approve
Reviewers get paged by Email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, or webhook — and ServiceNow / Jira tickets open automatically with bi-directional status sync. Multi-stage approval chains run as a state machine.
Execute or release
Queries and API calls execute through the proxy's own connections to each datasource; an approved deployment flips its fail-closed CI gate to releasable.
Audit forever
Append-only metadata audit row. The result is pushed to the submitter live. Status becomes EXECUTED.
Eighteen engines, one governed checkpoint.
PostgreSQL to Snowflake to MongoDB — find your engine and start governing. PostgreSQL is already there; for the rest, Install fetches the driver and SHA-256-verifies it before a single query runs. Using something else? Upload any JDBC driver. All database connectors →
SQL
PostgreSQL
Built in
MySQL
1-click install
MariaDB
1-click install
Oracle
1-click install
SQL Server
1-click install
ClickHouse
1-click install
NoSQL
MongoDB
1-click install
Couchbase
1-click install
Redis
1-click install
Cassandra
1-click install
ScyllaDB
1-click install
Elasticsearch
1-click install
OpenSearch
1-click install
DynamoDB
1-click install
Neo4j
1-click install
Snowflake
1-click install
BigQuery
1-click install
Databricks
1-click install
Install AccessFlow — governing queries, API calls and deployments in under five minutes.
Pick your platform. The backend initializes its schema on first boot, and the in-app setup wizard creates the first admin. Full install guide →
# zero-config demo — then open http://localhost:5173 git clone https://github.com/bablsoft/accessflow.git && cd accessflow docker compose up -d
# keys and the Postgres password are auto-generated on first install helm repo add accessflow https://bablsoft.github.io/accessflow helm install accessflow accessflow/accessflow -n accessflow --create-namespace
# infra, then backend (Java 25) and frontend (Node 24) — open http://localhost:5173 docker compose -f backend/docker-compose-dev.yml up -d mvn -f backend/pom.xml spring-boot:run npm --prefix frontend install && npm --prefix frontend run dev
What seven different teams are actually trying to fix.
Different teams, one governed checkpoint underneath. All database access management use cases →
Platform & infrastructure
Production access without shared credentials.
SRE & on-call
Just-in-time access that expires on its own.
Engineering managers & DBAs
Review at scale without a ticket queue.
Compliance & security
Audit evidence as a download, not a project.
Data protection & privacy
Privacy obligations as running processes.
Integration & backend
The same governance for your APIs.
Release engineering & CI/CD
Releases that wait for an approval.
AccessFlow FAQ — what people ask before they install it.
Short answers, with links onward to the pages that cover each properly.
What is a database access proxy?
A database access proxy sits between users and a database and brokers every connection, so nobody holds production credentials directly. Queries arrive at the proxy, which authenticates the person, applies policy, and only then talks to the database on their behalf. AccessFlow adds review and approval to that path.
How is AccessFlow different from a VPN or a bastion host?
A VPN or bastion controls who reaches the database; neither reads the query. Once you are through, you hold real credentials and can run anything. AccessFlow governs the statement itself — parsing it, scoring its risk, routing it for approval, and masking columns at execution time. Database proxy security architecture →
Is AccessFlow free, and what licence is it under?
AccessFlow is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 licence. There is no open-core tier, no paid edition, and no feature held back for a commercial version. You self-host it, and you can fork, audit, and modify it. The full source is on GitHub.
I have a question about how AccessFlow works. Who do I ask?
Ask AccessFlow. Start it locally, point it at an AI provider — a hosted one or a local model — and switch on the built-in help assistant. It answers questions about the application from the documentation shipped inside your version and cites the sections it used, whether you are a new user wondering what happens after you press Submit or an admin looking for the setting that controls a job. It reads documentation only: it never sees a query, a result, or an audit row. Ask the help assistant →
Where the platform is headed.
The full capability map — everything available now, per-milestone scope, and what's planned — is on the AccessFlow roadmap →
Stop choosing between speed and safety.
Pull the images, run docker compose up, point AccessFlow at your dev database, and watch a real query run through a real review workflow.
Built in the open.
AccessFlow sits in front of production data, so how it is built should be as checkable as what it does. Every claim below links to the evidence.
- 900+ commits
- Full history, public from the first commit.
- 20+ tagged releases
- Semver, published to GHCR and a Helm repo — not a rolling snapshot.
- Open to contributors
- Issues, discussions and PRs in the open.
- Apache 2.0
- Self-host it, fork it, audit it. No open-core tier.
Found a vulnerability? Report it privately through GitHub security advisories.