# Install spicedb with Homebrew, Nix Open Source, Google Zanzibar-inspired database. Version 1.56.0 via Homebrew; verified 2026-07-26. Also installable with nix: nix profile install nixpkgs#spicedb. ## Install ```sh sudo av install brew:spicedb ``` Additional install commands: ### macOS - Homebrew (100%): ```sh brew install spicedb ``` Evidence: local Homebrew formula metadata ### Linux - Nix (92%): ```sh nix profile install nixpkgs#spicedb ``` Evidence: nixpkgs package indexes: pkgs/by-name/sp/spicedb/package.nix from https://api.github.com/repos/NixOS/nixpkgs/git/trees/master?recursive=1 ## Package facts - **Package key:** brew:spicedb - **Package manager:** Homebrew - **Version:** 1.56.0 - **Source summary:** Open Source, Google Zanzibar-inspired database - **Homepage:** - **Repository:** - **Last updated:** 2026-07-26T04:03:43+02:00 - **Generated:** 2026-08-03T19:37:03+00:00 ## Executables - spicedb (alias) ## Install behavior - Bottle: not available ## Freshness - Page generated: 2026-08-03 - Package-manager version: 1.56.0 ## Project history and usage SpiceDB is AuthZed's open source, Google Zanzibar-inspired permissions database. It stores relationship data and answers authorization questions for applications that need centralized, fine-grained access control. ### Project history AuthZed's official history says its founders left Red Hat in August 2020, built an API-complete Zanzibar implementation called Arrakis in Python the next month, rewrote the idea in Go as Caladan in March 2021, and open-sourced it in September 2021 as SpiceDB. GitHub records the authzed/spicedb repository as created in August 2021, and the first v1.0.0 GitHub release was published on September 30, 2021. ### Adoption history SpiceDB grew with the broader interest in relationship-based access control and Zanzibar-style authorization outside large platform companies. Its README presents it as a centralized service for product suites and microservice architectures, and the official docs emphasize Kubernetes operation, gRPC and HTTP APIs, client libraries, schema validation, and datastore choices such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, CockroachDB, Spanner, and in-memory storage. ### How it is used Developers define a schema, write relationships, and use client libraries or APIs to check permissions. Operators run the spicedb binary or container with flags, environment variables, Kubernetes operator configuration, or a spicedb.env dotenv file, then connect it to a datastore for production use. ### Why package nerds care SpiceDB matters to package and CLI users because it packages a once-proprietary class of infrastructure as a downloadable binary, container image, and Homebrew formula. It is one of the modern examples where local CLI experimentation, Docker examples, Kubernetes operators, and security-sensitive production service packaging all describe the same tool. ### Timeline - 2020: AuthZed founders begin the first Zanzibar-inspired implementation after leaving Red Hat. - 2021: The project is rewritten in Go and open-sourced as SpiceDB. - 2021: SpiceDB v1.0.0 is released on GitHub. - 2026: SpiceDB remains actively released, with v1.54.0 published in June 2026. ### Related projects - Google Zanzibar is the main design inspiration. - AuthZed Cloud is the managed product around the SpiceDB ecosystem. - Open Policy Agent is documented as a comparison/migration reference in the official docs. - The SpiceDB Kubernetes Operator manages SpiceDB clusters in Kubernetes. ### Sources - - - - - ## Security Notes No matching local secret-handling manifest was found for spicedb. Nucleus package metadata is still published here so future coverage has a stable package URL. ## Configuration and credential file locations These source-backed paths show where this package keeps local settings or durable credentials. Automic Vault can use them as review targets for secret scanning, migration, and command approval. ## Configuration files - Unix: spicedb.env ## Other Package-Manager Records - Nix - spicedb: normalized package name match | nixpkgs package indexes: pkgs/by-name/sp/spicedb/package.nix from https://api.github.com/repos/NixOS/nixpkgs/git/trees/master?recursive=1 ## Combined YAML source View the package source record on GitHub. [combined/spicedb.yml](https://github.com/mxcl/pkgdb/blob/main/combined/spicedb.yml) ## Sources - pkg.so package database - Geiger risk classifier - curated configuration and credential file locations - curated package history - pkgdb category and tag curation - external package-manager database matches - cross-ecosystem install command graph