Introducing Monospace

Why Monospace

We’ve spent years helping teams turn database content into something they can build with. We built Directus for highly tailored digital experiences, and along the way became experts in modeling schemas, introspecting databases, making data management intuitive, and connecting content to wherever it needed to go.

Up until now, our focus has always centered on a single project with a single database. But as we started working with more enterprise companies, we kept running into a different shape of problem.

Bigger organizations have multiple teams, each managing multiple projects, with data and content often siloed across all kinds of disparate sources, and usually massive data volumes to go with it.

Through all of it, our mission has stayed the same: democratize data for those who build.

But AI has fundamentally changed how customers build. It’s made everyone a builder. Business users and AI agents now want to work with enterprise data the same way developers do, but most of them can’t easily get at the core data, so good ideas stall before they ever scale.

That left us with a series of questions: how do you let teams build meaningful projects without losing control? How do you govern data access? How do you maintain visibility into what gets created? Strict controls solve the governance problem, but stifle innovation. Loose controls do the opposite.

So today we are introducing something new. It’s called Monospace, and it’s now in public preview for anyone to use.

What Monospace Is

Monospace is the unified backend your whole organization builds on. Business users, AI agents, and dev teams alike. In simple terms, it sits between your data and everyone who needs to build on it. Monospace is purpose built for the enterprise reality: many workspaces, many disparate content and data sources, many types of builders, and a real need for governance at scale.

Imagine an organization with thousands of employees. Suddenly, they are all app builders. Monospace is how you govern data access across every one of them, and keep visibility into all the apps and projects they spin up.

For developers, this means far less time lost to building repetitive plumbing. Connect your data and content sources, get an instant API surface, and start building the innovative bits on day one.

For platform and architecture teams, it means one governance surface instead of scattered policies across a dozen systems. Monitor access requests, enforce permissions with detailed security policies, and maintain a full audit trail across everything.

And for business users, it means innovating on real enterprise data through the visual studio, MCP, and AI co-pilot, with the platform team managing what they can access so good ideas keep moving.

Public Preview Starts Now

We could’ve kept polishing this behind closed doors for a few more months, but our best decisions have always come from bringing real users into the conversation early. So that's what we're doing here… we want Monospace shaped by real usage.

Monospace is in public preview, which means you can get hands-on with it today.

We've spent years democratizing the database for the people who manage content. Now we're extending that idea to all the data across an organization… for everyone who builds… safely, and at scale.

If your teams are building on enterprise data and you’re feeling friction between innovation and governance, this is built for you. Sign up for the public preview, bring your own data sources, apps, and ideas, and put it through its paces on something real. Break it. Tell us what’s missing. Help us shape where things go next. Our team is here to help you get set up.

We’re at the very start of this one, and I’m genuinely excited about where it’s heading. If you have thoughts or feedback, please reach out!