DEV Community: Bucket.co

Bucket 2025-04 Update — MCP server, Slack notifications & new bucket.co

fmerian — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:42:51 +0000

At Bucket, we're on a mission to help you ship the right features faster with feature flags.

Below is a recap of what we shipped this month.

What Bucket shipped in April 2025

MCP server

We introduced the Bucket MCP server: flag features, manage company data, and control feature access from your favorite AI code editor — VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code...

Learn more in this changelog post
Follow the installation instructions here

Improved Slack notifications

We updated the integration with Slack. You now get the latest feature changes to stages and targeting rules.

Learn more in this changelog post

There's more

Last but not least, we also launched a new, markdown-inspired homepage to reflect on our vision — making feature flagging as frictionless as possible.

Go to bucket.co

Resources

fmerian for Bucket.co

Apr 3 '25

Add feature flags from the command line

#showdev #cli #tooling #featureflags

Comments

3 min read

fmerian for Bucket.co

Apr 15 '25

On Trunk-Based Development

#devjournal #softwareengineering #git #featureflags

Comments

2 min read

Wrapping up

That's a wrap!

If you have feedback or suggestions, we want to hear them! Let us know, ping @bucketdotco on X and follow us for the latest product updates.

We're crafting a feature flagging tool for SaaS companies.

Happy shipping!

On Trunk-Based Development

fmerian — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 22:07:50 +0000

Something wild happened this morning.

Bucket's CTO and co-founder, Ron '@roncohen' Cohen, who previously co-founded Opbeat and led engineering teams at Elastic, published a post on Trunk-Based Development (TBD) that hit the front page of Hacker News.

People reacted... differently! "This sounds horrible — Why even use Git?" "I've never worked any other way in 20+ years..." TBD clearly is a controversial topic!

Fun fact: you may already practice it. Ron wrote a follow-up post on Bucket.co to clarify some principles.

Below are my key takeaways.

TL,DR

Trunk-Based Development != push to main
You can still have code reviews and staging environments
Focus on small, coherent code changes

What is Trunk-Based Development?

In software engineering, trunk-based development (TBD) is a strategy to manage git workflows that favours merging commits into the main branch even before the feature is fully complete, instead of the git flow that favours working on long-lived branches until features are 100% complete.

fmerian for Bucket.co

Jan 30 '25

Introduction to Trunk-Based Development

#productivity #git #softwaredevelopment #featureflags

Comments

2 min read

Advanced Trunk-Based Development Principles

It doesn't require pushing directly to `main`

No, trunk-based development doesn't require pushing directly to main. While this might work in small engineering teams, code reviews remain essential for maintaining code quality. You can still use branches and pull requests (PR) while practicing TBD.

You can still have code reviews and staging environments

Yes, trunk-based development is compatible with multiple environments, including staging and pre-prod. You can still deploy your main branch to a staging environment for testing before pushing changes to production.

Focus on small, coherent code changes

Last but not least, it's all about creating coherent, small, and well-scoped code changes. This requires writing descriptive PR descriptions and breaking larger features into manageable, reviewable pieces.

Wrapping up

Trunk-based development (TBD) helps ship features faster. It doesn't require pushing code changes directly to main though. You can still use branches, pull requests, and code reviews. Above all, TBD is about creating small, frequent code changes.

That's a wrap!

If you enjoyed the read, please add some ❤️🦄🤯🙌🔥 and follow us @bucketdotco on X for more insights and best practices on trunk-based development.

We're building a feature flagging tool for SaaS companies that's crafted for speed.

Bucket MCP Server

fmerian — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 13:31:45 +0000

At Bucket, we're on a mission to make feature flagging as frictionless as possible.

TL,DR: We're launching the Bucket MCP Server. Start here.

Last month, we launched a CLI to remove any friction in creating features and help you maintain type safety. We're also experimenting with a GitHub app to clean up stale flags automatically. ¹

Today, we're introducing the Bucket MCP server to enable you to flag features, manage company data, and control feature access from your favorite AI code editor.

What's an MCP server?

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It's an emerging standard that enables AI tools to interact with external data sources — in this case, the Bucket API. MCP servers act as intermediaries, providing structured data to AI applications.

Flag features from your AI code editor with Bucket MCP server

Bucket MCP lets you flag features, manage company data, and control feature access directly from the chat window in your AI code editor — VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code, or any IDE that has MCP support.

Example 1: Add feature flags

For example, if you've built a "Download CSV" feature and want to flag it, you no longer have to go to bucket.co or use the CLI to create a feature key.

Instead, ask the MCP server to do it for you: "flag the download button with bucket"

Bucket MCP will then create a feature key on bucket.co with a relevant name and provide the context needed so your IDE's LLM will flag the feature in the codebase.

Example 2: Grant feature access

You can also use the Bucket MCP server to grant company segments and individual companies or users access to the feature straight from the chat window.

To give "Acme" access, for example, you'd ask something like: "give acme access to the download csv feature" and Bucket will look up the company name and enable the Download CSV feature for it.

Getting started with Bucket MCP

To get started, follow these steps:

Step 1: Install the CLI

npm install --save-dev @bucketco/cli
npx bucket init

Step 2: Start the MCP server

npx bucket mcp

Step 3: Add the MCP server to your IDE

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "Bucket feature flag MCP": {
      "url": "http://localhost:8050/sse"
    }
  }
}

That's it!

Read the documentation here for the latest updates and examples of what you can build with Bucket MCP.

Happy prompting!

Bucket 2025-03 Update — CLI, Type Safety, Toolbar & Launch Week ↩

Experimenting with Cursor

fmerian — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 18:06:45 +0000

If you want to build top software, you have to surround yourself with top software to experience it every day.

— Thomas Paul Mann, Co-founder and CEO of Raycast on linear.fm

At Bucket, we're building a modern feature flagging tool for SaaS developers and are always looking for products that can boost productivity and inspire us to build better software. ¹

Recently, the team experimented with Cursor, an AI-powered code editor, to replace GitHub Copilot.

Below are some key takeaways.

TLDR

Tab completion: Cursor includes a helpful tab completion feature, suggesting refactorings and improvements as you go — huge time saver
Chat: The chat/composer is better than Copilot as it can modify across files in the codebase. However, you still need to correct the code most of the time
Full context: Cursor has full context, so it provides more helpful advice and changes
Generating comments: Cursor makes it easier to add code comments — they need clarifications from time to time tho
Working with existing codebases: It seems better at writing code from scratch than contributing to large existing codebases
Hallucinations: Cursor has fewer hallucinations compared to alternatives — as far as we can tell
Prompting strategies: Being somewhat specific in prompts by referencing classes and functions seems to work well — We're currently experimenting with .cursorrules files to improve prompt quality

Cursor in review

Autocompletion

One feature that stands out is the tab completion, refactoring code as you go, and suggesting the next piece to improve with each press of the tab key — such a time saver!

Chat

Compared to GitHub Copilot, Cursor Chat seems more capable as it can modify code across files in your codebase.

However, we found that 90% of the time, we still need to make edits. We probably need to provide more guidance to get the most out of it.

Full context

One significant advantage of Cursor is its full context of the codebase. Therefore, it provides much more helpful advice and changes. It's not perfect. It's a step up from alternatives tho.

Integrating with existing codebases

When interacting with larger, pre-existing codebases, we have mixed feelings. It seems to do a better job when writing code from scratch than contributing to existing projects. We experimented with the Composer to create a full feature in an existing codebase, and it didn't go smoothly.

We need more experimentation and potentially custom system prompts here.

Hallucinations

From what we've seen, Cursor doesn't hallucinate much - definitely less than GitHub Copilot. We only encountered 1 or 2 instances. We didn't attempt many cross-project changes tho. This may vary.

Prompt engineering

To get the best results from Cursor, we found that being moderately specific in prompts works well. As long as you reference relevant classes or functions, it can usually infer what you need from the file context. There are also ⁠.cursorrules files that can help fine-tune the behavior further.

We're planning to investigate more on that — stay tuned

Wrapping up

That's all, folks!

We're very happy with the experience so far and look forward to working more in-depth with Cursor. While it won't write the entire, fully functional code for you, it can provide a real productivity boost, especially with its tab completion and custom rules.

If you enjoyed this post, please add some ❤️🦄🤯🙌🔥

There's one more thing.

We're currently working on an MCP server to let you flag features, manage company data, and control feature access from Cursor — Edit: it's live!

fmerian for Bucket.co

Apr 9 '25

Bucket MCP Server

#webdev #ai #productivity #featureflags

Comments 2

2 min read

Follow @bucketdotco on X for the latest product updates.

Why we use Clerk for auth ↩

Add feature flags from the command line

fmerian — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 10:42:03 +0000

At Bucket, we're on a mission to help you ship the right features faster. We're building a feature flagging tool that's crafted for speed, built for B2B SaaS.

We've recently shipped a command line interface (CLI) that you can use to interact with Bucket. It removes any friction in creating feature flags from the command line and helps you maintain type safety for your features.

Here's what you can do with the Bucket CLI:

Create new features with the new command
Manage features and ensure type safety
Manage companies and apps
Manage authentication with login and logout

To get started:

npm install @bucketco/cli

Create new features with type safety

`bucket new [featureName]`

This is the all-in-one command to get started quickly. Use this for the fastest way to get up and running with Bucket.

Example

bucket new "My Feature" [--key my-feature] [--app-id ap123456789] [--key-format custom] [--out gen/features.ts] [--format react]

Options

--key: Specific key for the feature
--app-id: App ID to use
--key-format: Format for feature keys (custom, snake, camel, etc.)
--out: Path to generate TypeScript types
--format: Format of the generated types (react or node)

Manage features from the command line

To manage your features using the Bucket CLI, use the following subcommands:

`bucket features create`

Create a new feature in your Bucket app.

The command guides you through the feature creation process with interactive prompts if options are not provided.

bucket features create "My Feature"

`bucket features list`

List all features for the current app.

This helps you visualize what features are available and their current configs.

bucket features list

`bucket features types`

Generate TypeScript types for your features.

This ensures type safety in your TypeScript/JavaScript applications.

bucket features types

Manage company data and feature access

To manage company data and feature access using the Bucket CLI, use the following subcommands:

`bucket companies list`

List all companies for the current app.

This helps you visualize the companies using your features and their basic metrics.

bucket companies list

`bucket companies features access`

Grant or revoke access to specific features for a company.

If no feature key is provided, the CLI will prompt you to select one from a list.

Example

bucket companies features access <companyId> [featureKey] [--enable|--disable] [--app-id ap123456789]

Arguments

companyId: ID of the company to manage
featureKey: Key of the feature to grant/revoke access to

Options

--enable: Enable the feature for this company
--disable: Disable the feature for this company
--app-id: App ID to use

Use flags for more options

Flags are parameters you can pass while launching the command. These parameters are optional.

--debug: Enable debug mode for verbose output
--base-url <url>: Set the base URL for Bucket API
--api-url <url>: Set the API URL directly (overrides base URL)
--help: Display help information for a command

If you want to learn more, you can read the documentation.

Start from your terminal

That's a wrap!

The Bucket CLI is available right now. You can install it via NPM or Yarn:

# npm
npm install --save-dev @bucketco/cli

# yarn
yarn add --dev @bucketco/cli

Need help? Ping us @bucketdotco on X.

Enjoy!

Bucket 2025-03 Update — CLI, Type Safety, Toolbar & Launch Week

fmerian — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 14:46:11 +0000

At Bucket, we're on a mission to help you build better products with feature flags.

Here's a recap of what we shipped this month.

What Bucket shipped in March 2025

CLI & Type Safety
Toolbar
Event log
GitHub app
Revamped docs

CLI & Type Safety

Introducing the Bucket CLI.

Create new features from the command line and maintain type safety while building. When creating a new feature, the CLI updates your local types to make sure they match types defined in Bucket.

Get started now — copy/paste this in your terminal:

npm i @⁠bucketco/cli

Learn more in this changelog post

Toolbar

We introduced the Toolbar to help you toggle features on and off when building locally.

Learn more in this changelog post

Event log

See all event data sent to Bucket, filter them by type, and get detailed context for quick debugging.

Learn more in this changelog post

GitHub app

We now integrate with GitHub to automatically clean up your feature flags after roll out.

Learn more in this changelog post
Currently in limited access, you can request an early preview here

Revamped docs

CLI, Tool, Event log, GitHub app... The docs needed a refresh. We introduced a new layout, comprehensive step-by-step guides, and a public repository.

Read the documentation

There's more: Event listeners & Add in bulk

This month, we also launched:

Event listeners: We've made it possible to integrate Bucket with other platforms like Amplitude and Datadog through event listeners in Bucket SDKs — View changelog post
Add in bulk: For Pro customers, we enabled bulk actions. You can select multiple customers and give them access to features in bulk — View changelog post

Resources

Release beta features to your React app with Bucket

fmerian for Bucket.co ・ Mar 7 '25

#showdev #tooling #featureflags #react

How we launch

fmerian for Bucket.co ・ Mar 12 '25

#devjournal #startup

Wrapping up

That's a wrap!

CLI, Tool, Event log, GitHub app... What should we build next? Let us know! Ping @bucketdotco on X and follow us for the latest product updates.

We're crafting a feature flagging tool for SaaS companies.

Happy shipping!

🔴 Live: Bucket DX on Product Hunt

fmerian — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 12:16:16 +0000

Launching keeps reminding the market that your company exists and you’re making progress.

— Karri Saarinen, CEO of Linear in Linear Method

Bucket first launched on Product Hunt on June 8, 2023.

On March 18, 2025, we launched Bucket DX — a series of features making feature flagging a fast, joyful experience for SaaS developers: CLI, Toolbar, Event log, and more.

Product Hunt is a 24-hour run, starting at 12:01 AM PST. Tune in for live updates.

Join the launch: @bucketdotco on Twitter/X

`11:59:PM:PST` — wrapping up

That's a wrap!

Results:

242 points
42 comments
#7 Product of the Day
#5 Developer Tool of the Week

Go to launch page on producthunt.com

What's next? This launch is part of Bucket's first-ever launch week — a week of announcing new features.

Launching on Product Hunt definitely is not a one-time opportunity. It pays off in the long term.

Awesome developer-first products like Stripe, Supabase, and Raycast, have launched there multiple times — resp. 69, 15, and 13 launches. We're gearing up to be part of this list.

How we launch

fmerian for Bucket.co ・ Mar 12

#devjournal #startup

`08:56:PM:PST` — new milestone: 231 upvotes

We just surpassed Flags that we launched in November 2024. We're still #7 Product of the Day.

Aman '@amanintech' Sharm, CTO and Co-founder of Lamatic.ai, commented:

Feature flagging is challenging and Bucket makes it incredibly developer-friendly.

— Aman Sharma, CTO of Lamatic.ai on Product Hunt

`10:07:AM:PST` — new milestone: 200 upvotes

We're currently #7 Product of the Day and just reached 200 upvotes. 31 more upvotes to go and surpass Flags that we launched in November 2024.

`05:42:AM:PST` — new milestone: 148 upvotes

This launch is Bucket's fourth launch on Product Hunt. We just surpassed Releases that we launched in February 2024. We're still #7 Product of the Day.

Next up: Bucket Flags — 231 upvotes

`04:01:AM:PST` — we're currently #7!

We're currently #7 Product of the Day, with 124 upvotes and 25 comments.

Join the launch

`02:16:AM:PST` — new milestone: 100 upvotes

Product Hunt is a great place for developer tools to launch — a place where many dev-first products launched successfully: Supabase, Resend, and Warp, to name a few.

It helps raise awareness, get feedback, and collect testimonials — the type of materials you can reuse later on for your marketing purposes.

Take this comment from Dima '@scopsy' Grossman, CTO and Co-founder of Novu, for example:

The DX is just out of this world. If you're not using Bucket in your project, you are missing out.

— Dima Grossman, CTO of Novu on Product Hunt

`12:01:AM:PST` — going live

We're featured on Product Hunt!

For the first 4 hours of the day, Product Hunt hides upvotes and sorts the homepage randomly. According to Product Hunt, this should give products "a more distributed chance at exposure early."

Here's a shortcut — Direct link: Bucket DX on Product Hunt

Product Hunt for DevTools — FAQ

fmerian ・ Feb 23

#startup #marketing #discuss

How we launch

fmerian — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 22:23:42 +0000

Launch weeks are great for both aligning the team and getting traction within the community.

— Rory Wilding, COO of Supabase on launchweek.dev

Last month was Bucket's first-ever Launch Week — a week of announcing new features to make feature flagging a fast, joyful experience for SaaS developers.

This post is about why it's important and what it means for Bucket.

Why we're planning a launch week

I joined Bucket last January, and one thing stands out: This team ships. It ships really fast.

In the last 12 months, the team released 38 product updates. We write changelogs and thoughtfully share them on LinkedIn and Twitter/X. People often tell us: "I've been following you for a long time and am impressed with how much you ship."

This year, we're gearing up. We have so much to announce that we decided to run a launch week — a week of announcing new features.

The Shaping phase

We had opinions on how we wanted to plan this launch week. We wanted to:

Launch in the next 6 weeks
Launch with another dev-first company to increase reach
And above all, we didn't want to hold back feature releases

First, we listed the projects we wanted to build and prioritized them by appetite. Then we started building. Four weeks in, we reflected on what we could ship on time and what would require more time to craft.

In the meantime, we keep shipping — at least one product update per week. Launch weeks shouldn't hold back new feature releases. To quote Rory '@rorstro' Wilding from Supabase, we want to "ship and shout as much as possible" — Source

Warming up

As soon as we committed to a calendar and release dates, we started raising awareness and building momentum. At Bucket, we value craftsmanship. We spent time on pixels, agreed on a visual direction 2 weeks ahead, and started posting on socials.

Launching

The week is launch week — a week of announcing 5 features. It could be more, it could be less. To be upfront, they are new features, updates, and existing features, too — features that we think would need a spotlight.

To quote Ant '@awalias' Wilson from Supabase:

You can launch a new feature many times over and always manage to reach people who either forgot, ignored, or just plain missed it the first few times.

— Ant Wilson, CTO and Co-founder of Supabase on How we launch at Supabase

For these announcements, we had the following approach:

Publish a changelog post and/or an engineering post
Post on socials: LinkedIn, Bluesky, X
Quote new posts in a meta thread

We encourage every team member to engage on these posts with likes, reposts, and quotes.

When it makes sense, we also plan a launch on Product Hunt. For example, on Launch Week [0], we partnered with Tinybird. Go to the launch page here

Post mortem

This may be the most important part. Post-launch, we analyze the results and impact on the business. We reflect on what worked, what didn't work, and what can be improved. Above all, the objective is to determine if launch weeks are worth the effort — TL,DR: they are.

Final thoughts

This first-ever launch week certainly is not the last one. We believe that consistency is key, and we'll keep launching.

From the Linear Method: "By launching multiple times, you are building your story and brand over time and compounding people's interest. Each launch builds more following, which then helps your future launches. Launching keeps reminding the market that your company exists and you're making progress."

According to launchweek.dev, only 7 companies in the world ran 3+ launch weeks last year. 7 companies in the world. We want to be part of this shortlist. We're planning to run 3 launch weeks by the end of this year. It starts this month, from March 17 to March 21. We also plan to be part of the Mega Launch Week later this year and plan another launch week in between.

Launch weeks are the new flagship at Bucket.

We're building a feature flagging tool crafted for speed.

References

How we launch at Supabase, Ant Wilson (2021)
Launch and keep launching, Linear Method (2020)

Release beta features to your React app with Bucket

fmerian — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 19:29:59 +0000

Happy Friday!

At Bucket, we're building a feature flagging tool for SaaS developers, and we just rolled out a beta feature: Remote Config — a flexible, JSON-based approach to configure features at runtime — and yes, we ship on Fridays.

Here's how we did using Bucket. #dogfooding

Release beta features in React with Bucket

In this post, we'll take the following steps:

Step 1: Flag your new feature in React
Step 2: Set up your feature rollout strategy
Step 3: Start collecting user feedback

Step 1: Flag your new feature in React

First off, you need to sign up for Bucket — sign up here

Now let's create your first feature.

Click New feature in the sidebar.
Give your feature a name and you'll get a feature key.

We'll use this feature key to flag the new feature in the codebase.

Let's install the Bucket React SDK.

Copy/paste this in your terminal:

npm i @bucketco/react-sdk

Let's initialize the client and install the access checking:

import { BucketProvider, useFeature } from "@bucketco/react-sdk";

const App = () => (
  <BucketProvider
    publishableKey="pub_prod_*********************"
    user={{ id: "fmerian", name: "Flo Merian" }}
    company={{ id: "bucket", name: "Bucket.co" }}
  >
    <RemoteConfig />
  </BucketProvider>
);

const RemoteConfig = () => {
  const { isEnabled } = useFeature("remote-config");

  if (!isEnabled) return null;

  return <div>Remote Config is ON</div>;
}

It works! Let's deploy.

Step 2: Set up your feature rollout strategy

Head back over to your dashboard, select your new feature, and navigate to the Access tab to manage who gets access.

We set the feature stage to Beta
Here we're running a public beta, so we just pick Everyone
Hit Save to ship the beta feature to everyone

All set!

Pro tip: We integrate with Slack to keep the team informed and get notified about feature access and stage updates. This ensures everyone is aligned during the rollout process.

Step 3: Start collecting user feedback

Remote Config is an important feature for us and we want to make sure we get it right before making it Generally Available (GA).

So we want to hear from the beta users.

Let's add a feedback button. It's simple, we need to add requestFeedback and trigger it on a button.

See example here:

function RemoteConfig() {

  const { isEnabled, requestFeedback } = useFeature("remote-config");

  if (!isEnabled) return null;

  return (
    <div>
      Remote Config is ON
      <button onClick={(e)=
        requestFeedback({
          "title": "How do you like Remote Config?"
        });
        Give feedback
      </button>
    </div>
  );
}

Pro tip: we can also use track to measure feature adoption. This gives us a list of early adopters and we might reach out to them for in-depth feedback once they've used the feature.

Next step: Going GA

Let's recap:

We created a feature flag
We rolled it out in public beta
We started collecting user feedback

The next step is to iterate on the feature based on customer feedback and, when ready, to release it in GA.

To do so, we'll need to go back to the Access tab and bump the stage to GA.

That's it!

Over to you! If you want to ship your next beta feature with Bucket, go to bucket.co and let us know what you think — ping @bucketdotco on X

We're crafting the feature flagging tool purpose-built for B2B SaaS companies.

Happy shipping!

Bucket 2025-02 Update — Event log, Secret features & Beta remote config

fmerian — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 13:42:00 +0000

At Bucket, we're on a mission to help you build better products with feature flags.

Here's a recap of what we shipped this month.

What Bucket shipped in February 2025

Improved Event log
Secret features
Custom feature key naming convention
Custom avatar support
Beta Remote Config

Improved Event log

We've revamped the debugger: introducing the Event log.

You can now see event data sent to Bucket – evaluate, check, user, company, and track – and slice it with filters. This makes it easier to get started and debug data issues.

Learn more about Event log in this changelog post

Secret features

We've made it possible to mark features as "secret" on Bucket.

This means you can use a feature on your backend and ensure that the feature key is never revealed to any users.

Learn more about Secret features in this changelog post

Custom feature key naming convention

You can now define your feature key naming convention when creating a new feature.

SNAKE_UPPER_CASE, camelCase, kebab-lower-case (default), or else... You decide.

Learn more about feature key naming conventions in this changelog post

Custom avatar support

Quality-of-life improvement: We now display company logos and user avatars in the UI.

Learn more about this improvement in this changelog post

Beta Remote Config

Last but not least, we’ve shipped a beta release, introducing remote feature configuration to Bucket — a dynamic and flexible approach to configuring feature behaviour outside of your app without redeployments.

Learn more about Remote Config in this changelog post
Join the beta on bucket.co

Resources

On trunk-based development (TBD): Following up on this introduction to TBD, Bucket's CTO and co-founder, Ron '@roncohen' Cohen, wrote a follow-up post to answer frequently asked questions on the topic.
Why we use Clerk for auth: We prioritize craftsmanship at Bucket and, when we started building the auth feature — the first interaction you have with the product — we wanted to make it a great first-time experience. This is why we decided to use Clerk.
How Bucket uses GitBook to deliver developer-first documentation: We recently sat down with Addison Schultz, Developer Relations Lead at GitBook, to discuss how it helps us create and maintain high-quality developer docs.

One more thing

That's almost it for this month. There's one more thing.

We'll run our first-ever launch week on March 17-21. Follow us @bucketdotco on X for the latest updates. We'll be live on Product Hunt on March 18 — Get notified here

We're crafting the feature management tool purpose-built for B2B SaaS companies.

Happy shipping!

Documentation is the product

fmerian — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 11:20:02 +0000

Documentation is one of the first things developers will interact with when they're learning, and it's the thing they'll keep coming back to as they integrate deeper.
This means we need to treat it as a first-class citizen.

— Zeno Rocha, Co-founder and CEO of Resend in Resend's Philosophy

When I joined Bucket a few weeks ago, Rasmus '@makwarth' Makwarth started by introducing me to Bucket's first principle: Quality over quantity.

We prioritize craftsmanship. Because we're building a developer-first product, a feature management tool for B2B engineers, this applies to documentation, too. To quote @zenorocha, "documentation is not auxiliary to the product — documentation is the product." As developers, it's one of the first things we read when evaluating a new tool. Great docs are vital. We want our docs to be as polished as our product, as thoughtful and helpful as possible for a consistent, joyful experience. Our documentation must reflect Bucket's first principles.

GitBook powers our docs, as part of a design-driven decision, and we recently sat down with Addison Schultz, Developer Relations Lead at GitBook, to discuss how it helps us create and maintain high-quality developer docs.

Read the full interview on gitbook.com.

If you enjoyed, please add some ❤️🦄🤯🙌🔥 and repost this

Why we use Clerk for auth

fmerian — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 13:42:00 +0000

In a previous post, I mentioned tools that we use and inspire us when building Bucket — a modern feature management tool that's purpose-built for B2B SaaS products.

This made me want to create a series featuring our stack — starting with Clerk, a user management platform.

We prioritize craftsmanship. So, when we started building the auth feature — the first interaction you have with the product — we wanted to make it a great first-time experience.

We wanted you to have a seamless, secure, and beautifully crafted login experience, and we also needed a solution that is easy to maintain and scales with our needs. After evaluating several providers, we ultimately picked Clerk.

Here's why.

TL,DR

First, we used Google Auth with Passport.js, and faced some limitations.
We considered multiple options: GCP Identity Platform, WorkOS, Clerk.
We picked Clerk. Beautiful out-of-the-box, quickly set up, and scalable — a no-brainer.

The need for a new auth provider

Initially, we were using Google Auth with Passport.js to handle authentication. While this setup worked, it had some limitations:

Passport.js is unmaintained – Relying on an outdated auth library wasn’t a sustainable long-term solution.
We needed user/password authentication – Some users preferred traditional credentials over Google authentication.
SSO support was becoming essential – As a B2B-focused product, we were looking towards a solution that would make it simple to provide Sign-On (SSO) with SAML.

These needs pushed us to search for a more robust and scalable auth solution.

Evaluating options

We considered several providers, including:

GCP Identity Platform, Google's Identity Platform — affordable and integrated with other Google Cloud services. However, from our perspective, it lacked some of the developer experience (DX) improvements we were looking for.
WorkOS – a mature and feature-rich auth provider. However, we didn't feel 100% confident about their pricing structure and their per-connection SAML costs in particular.
Clerk – a "comprehensive user management platform" with a developer-friendly approach, beautiful pre-built UI components, and a strong vision that goes beyond just auth.

These three options supported core authentication features like SSO and SAML, and Clerk ultimately won us over.

Why Clerk?

TL,DR:

Quick setup
Beautifully crafted
Broader vision
Reasonable pricing
Responsive support

1. Quick setup

Above all, one advantage of Clerk was its simple setup.

We were able to integrate Clerk into our platform quickly, without significant friction. Their documentation was clear, and their API made it simple to implement auth without unnecessary complexity.

Here's what it looks like to add Clerk components to a Next.js app:

import type { Metadata } from 'next'
import {
  ClerkProvider,
  SignInButton,
  SignUpButton,
  SignedIn,
  SignedOut,
  UserButton,
} from '@clerk/nextjs'
import { Geist, Geist_Mono } from 'next/font/google'
import './globals.css'

const geistSans = Geist({
  variable: '--font-geist-sans',
  subsets: ['latin'],
})

const geistMono = Geist_Mono({
  variable: '--font-geist-mono',
  subsets: ['latin'],
})

export const metadata: Metadata = {
  title: 'Clerk Next.js Quickstart',
  description: 'Generated by create next app',
}

export default function RootLayout({
  children,
}: Readonly<{
  children: React.ReactNode
}>) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider>
      <html lang="en">
        <body className={`${geistSans.variable} ${geistMono.variable} antialiased`}>
          <header className="flex justify-end items-center p-4 gap-4 h-16">
            <SignedOut>
              <SignInButton />
              <SignUpButton />
            </SignedOut>
            <SignedIn>
              <UserButton />
            </SignedIn>
          </header>
          {children}
        </body>
      </html>
    </ClerkProvider>
  )
}

2. Beautiful pre-built components

Clerk offers beautifully crafted UI components that fit seamlessly into Bucket.

As a company that values craftsmanship, having a signup flow that looked good out of the box was key to us. Clerk saves us time and ensures a smooth UX from Day 1.

3. Broader vision

Clerk isn't just about auth.

It also provides user roles and access control, on which we can define permissions and secure different access levels within Bucket. These features are priceless for a B2B SaaS company, and we're super excited about this flexibility as we scale.

4. Reasonable pricing

Their pricing seemed very reasonable to us.

While GCP Identity Platform seems cheaper, Clerk balances affordability and functionality. And we didn't have to worry about unexpected pricing jumps as we onboard more SSO/SAML customers.

5. Responsive support

Last but not least, during our implementation, we ran into some issues, and their support team replied fast, helping us resolve them quickly — S/O to @brianmmdev and team!

Final thoughts

Switching to Clerk has been a great decision for us. Beautiful out-of-the-box, quickly set up, and scalable — it's a no-brainer, and a source of inspiration for us at Bucket.

We're building a feature management tool for B2B SaaS products based on these exact first principles: craftsmanship, developer-first, and scalability.

If you're into it, go to bucket.co, give it a spin, and let us know what you think @bucketdotco on X.

We'd love to have your feedback!

DEV Community: Bucket.co

Bucket 2025-04 Update — MCP server, Slack notifications & new bucket.co

What Bucket shipped in April 2025

MCP server

Improved Slack notifications

There's more

Resources

Add feature flags from the command line

On Trunk-Based Development

Wrapping up

On Trunk-Based Development

TL,DR

What is Trunk-Based Development?

Introduction to Trunk-Based Development

Advanced Trunk-Based Development Principles

It doesn't require pushing directly to main

You can still have code reviews and staging environments

Focus on small, coherent code changes

Wrapping up

Bucket MCP Server

What's an MCP server?

Flag features from your AI code editor with Bucket MCP server

Example 1: Add feature flags

Example 2: Grant feature access

Getting started with Bucket MCP

Experimenting with Cursor

TLDR

Cursor in review

Autocompletion

Chat

Full context

Integrating with existing codebases

Hallucinations

Prompt engineering

Wrapping up

Bucket MCP Server

Add feature flags from the command line

Create new features with type safety

bucket new [featureName]

Manage features from the command line

bucket features create

bucket features list

bucket features types

Manage company data and feature access

bucket companies list

bucket companies features access

Use flags for more options

Start from your terminal

Bucket 2025-03 Update — CLI, Type Safety, Toolbar & Launch Week

What Bucket shipped in March 2025

CLI & Type Safety

Toolbar

Event log

GitHub app

Revamped docs

There's more: Event listeners & Add in bulk

Resources

Release beta features to your React app with Bucket

fmerian for Bucket.co ・ Mar 7 '25

How we launch

fmerian for Bucket.co ・ Mar 12 '25

Wrapping up

🔴 Live: Bucket DX on Product Hunt

11:59:PM:PST — wrapping up

How we launch

fmerian for Bucket.co ・ Mar 12

08:56:PM:PST — new milestone: 231 upvotes

10:07:AM:PST — new milestone: 200 upvotes

05:42:AM:PST — new milestone: 148 upvotes

04:01:AM:PST — we're currently #7!

02:16:AM:PST — new milestone: 100 upvotes

12:01:AM:PST — going live

Product Hunt for DevTools — FAQ

fmerian ・ Feb 23

How we launch

Why we're planning a launch week

The Shaping phase

Warming up

Launching

Post mortem

It doesn't require pushing directly to `main`

`bucket new [featureName]`

`bucket features create`

`bucket features list`

`bucket features types`

`bucket companies list`

`bucket companies features access`

`11:59:PM:PST` — wrapping up

`08:56:PM:PST` — new milestone: 231 upvotes

`10:07:AM:PST` — new milestone: 200 upvotes

`05:42:AM:PST` — new milestone: 148 upvotes

`04:01:AM:PST` — we're currently #7!

`02:16:AM:PST` — new milestone: 100 upvotes

`12:01:AM:PST` — going live