Postgres options

CrashCart needs Postgres 16 or newer. TimescaleDB is optional.

With or without TimescaleDB

CrashCart uses TimescaleDB when it's available and plain Postgres otherwise. Nothing changes in how you use it. The difference:

	Plain Postgres	With TimescaleDB
Works on	Neon, Supabase, RDS, Cloud SQL, a local `apt install postgresql`	The `timescale/timescaledb` image (what Docker Compose uses), Timescale Cloud, self-managed
Storage	5–10× more (no compression)	Compressed after 48 h
Matters at	—	Tens of millions of events a month

Below a few million events a month there is no practical difference. Pick whatever Postgres you already have.

The choice is made the first time CrashCart starts against a database and stays. To switch later, export and import into a new database.

The TIMESCALE variable controls detection: auto (default), on or off.

The database user needs to create tables. On hosts that offer TimescaleDB, either let the user create the extension or create it once as an admin:

sql

CREATE EXTENSION timescaledb;

Take the provider's connection URL as DATABASE_URL:

DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@host/crashcart?sslmode=require

For a zero-ops setup see Fly.io + Neon.