The migrations in the alembic/versions contain the migrations. Before running this migration ensure that the database cue exists. Currently the database connection string is in cue/db/migration/alembic.ini but this should eventually be pulled out into an cue configuration file. Set connection string is set by the line: sqlalchemy.url = mysql://:@localhost/ To run migrations you must first be in the cue/db/migrate directory. To migrate to the most current version run: $ alembic upgrade head To downgrade one migration run: $ alembic downgrade -1