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Manual Setup

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Prerequisites

  • Docker (for shadow containers — required for all engines except SQLite and DuckDB)

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Install

curl -fsSL https://moridb.sh/install.sh | sh

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Steps

1

Initialize a connection

Point Mori at your production database. The interactive setup walks you through engine, provider, and credentials.
mori init
For a non-interactive setup, you can pass a connection string directly:
mori init --from "postgres://user:pass@host:5432/mydb?sslmode=require"
This saves the connection config to mori.yaml. No containers or connections are created yet.
2

Start the proxy

mori start
On first run, Mori:
  1. Connects to your production database
  2. Discovers schema and structure (SQL engines dump tables/types/sequences; Firestore discovers collections; Redis scans key prefixes)
  3. Spins up a shadow database (Docker container, local file copy, or emulator)
  4. Replicates structure to shadow (SQL engines replay schema; Firestore seeds documents; Redis starts empty)
  5. Detects and replicates extensions to shadow (PostgreSQL — auto-installs via apt-get if needed; use --image on mori init for custom images)
  6. Offsets auto-increment sequences to prevent PK collisions (SQL engines only)
  7. Starts the proxy and listens on a local port
Use --port to pick a specific port, or let Mori auto-assign. Subsequent starts are faster since the shadow already exists.If complex queries over large tables are slow, you can limit how many rows Mori hydrates from prod per query:
mori start --max-rows 10000
3

Point your app at Mori

Swap your application’s connection string to point at 127.0.0.1 on the proxy port. Same driver, same protocol — your app won’t know the difference.
# Before (direct to prod)
DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@prod-host:5432/mydb

# After (through Mori)
DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@127.0.0.1:5432/mydb
4

Stop Mori

Closes the connection to prod and spins down the shadow container. State is persisted for future runs.
mori stop
5

Soft reset between runs

Wipe all local state to quickly start fresh on the next run.
mori reset
6

Hard reset when schema changes

Wipes all local state and deletes the shadow container. Use this when the production schema has changed since the last init. This takes longer than a soft reset.
mori reinit

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Enabling the MCP Server

Start Mori with the MCP server for AI agent integration: 
mori start --mcp --mcp-port 9000
AI agents connect to http://127.0.0.1:9000/mcp and get engine-specific tools (SQL queries, Redis commands, or Firestore operations) — all safely routed through the proxy.

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Lifecycle

mori init         Connect to prod, discover structure, spin up shadow
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mori start        Start proxy, load state, accept connections
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  [app runs]      CRUD operations routed transparently
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mori stop         Persist state, shut down proxy
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mori reset        Wipe shadow data + metadata, clean slate

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For AI Agents

If you’re setting up Mori with an AI coding agent, download the skill.md file and add it to your project root. Point your agent at it — it contains everything needed to install, initialize, and start Mori. 
curl -fsSL https://moridb.sh/skill.md -o skill.md
Your agent can read skill.md and handle the rest autonomously.