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What is Evidence?

Evidence is an open source framework for building data products with SQL - things like reports, decision-support tools, and embedded dashboards. It’s a code-driven alternative to drag-and-drop BI tools.
Try Evidence Studio - the new, faster way to build data products with SQL, markdown and AI.

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Business intelligence as code

Evidence generates a website from markdown files, combining the power of SQL with the simplicity of markdown to create interactive reports and dashboards. Evidence workflow diagram

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Key capabilities

SQL in markdown

Write SQL queries directly in your markdown files. Query results are automatically available to your components.

Interactive components

Built-in component library with charts, tables, and UI elements. All components are designed to work seamlessly with your query results.

Templated pages

Generate hundreds of pages from a single markdown template. Perfect for creating dashboards for each customer, product, or region.

Multiple data sources

Connect to data warehouses (Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks), databases (Postgres, MySQL, DuckDB), or flat files (CSV, Parquet).

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How it works

Evidence renders a BI website from markdown files:
  1. Data sources can include data warehouses, databases, and flat files
  2. SQL statements inside markdown files run queries against your data sources
  3. Charts and components are rendered using these query results
  4. Templated pages generate many pages from a single markdown template
  5. Loops and conditionals allow dynamic control of what is displayed to users

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Example: Query and visualize in one file

Here’s a simple Evidence page that queries data and creates a chart: 
# Sales dashboard

```sql orders_by_month
select
    date_trunc('month', order_datetime) as order_month,
    count(*) as number_of_orders,
    sum(sales) as sales_usd
from orders
group by 1
order by 1 desc
```

<LineChart 
    data={orders_by_month}
    x="order_month"
    y="sales_usd" 
    title="Sales by Month, USD" 
/>
That’s it! Evidence handles the query execution, data formatting, and chart rendering.

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Use cases

Internal reports

Replace static PDF reports with interactive, always-up-to-date dashboards

Customer analytics

Build embedded analytics for your customers with templated pages

Data apps

Create decision-support tools that combine data visualization with business logic

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Prerequisites

To use Evidence you need:
  • SQL knowledge - Evidence uses SQL for data queries
  • Basic markdown - Familiarity with markdown syntax is helpful
  • Node.js 18+ - Required to run the Evidence development server

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Get started

Quickstart

Get a working Evidence app in under 5 minutes

Installation

Detailed installation instructions for all platforms

View examples

Explore real Evidence apps and use cases

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Getting help

If you need support:

Join our Slack

Get help from the Evidence community

GitHub Issues

Report bugs or request features
This documentation site is itself built with Evidence. All examples you see are running live queries and real components.

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