Evidence

Evidence is an open source, code-based alternative to drag-and-drop business intelligence tools. Reports are written as SQL queries and markdown, so a dashboard becomes a file in a repository rather than a layout somebody rebuilt by hand inside a vendor's web app.

The project describes itself as agent ready. You can develop inside the Evidence agent, or on your own machine alongside coding assistants such as Claude Code or Cursor, with a command line tool handling the rest of the loop.

The workflow stays close to the terminal.

• Install script: one command sets up the command line tool on macOS, Linux or Windows.
• Project scaffolding: evidence init creates a project and evidence dev serves it while you write.
• SQL and markdown: report sources are plain text, so they diff, review and merge like code.
• Static output: the build produces a site you can serve from your own infrastructure.
• Evidence Studio: publish to the hosted service when you would rather not run anything at all.

Self-hosting asks for little more than somewhere to serve static files, which makes this a light option next to a full BI server. Anyone comfortable writing SQL can produce reports without learning another vendor interface, and the maintainers run a public Slack channel for questions.