Tech Stack

Royal Glow is built for scale (20k–50k users), premium feel, and long-term maintainability by a single developer. Every technology choice is made with that constraint in mind.

Total monthly infrastructure cost at launch was designed to stay near free-tier levels. The stack remains India-first (DPDP, IST, paise, GST 18%) and optimized so one developer can operate it with minimal overhead. CloudFront provides application edge delivery; Cloudflare remains DNS and R2 storage only.

The Stack by Layer

Browse each layer of the platform. Every choice below is in production use.

Layer	Technology	Why
Runtime	Bun	Faster than Node.js for installs, test runs, and scripts
Language	TypeScript (strict)	Type safety across the full stack — catches ~40% of bugs before tests run
Framework	Next.js 16.2.9 (App Router)	SSR, SSG, API routes, and React Server Components. `params`/`searchParams` are Promises in v16.
UI	React	Component model, ecosystem
Styling	Tailwind CSS v4	Utility-first, design tokens, fast iteration
Components	shadcn/ui	Copy-paste Radix-based components — fully owned, zero runtime overhead
Animation	motion (motion.dev)	Page transitions, staggered reveals, micro-interactions — free tier
Monorepo	Turborepo + Bun workspaces	Bun manages packages; Turborepo handles task orchestration + incremental caching

Why shadcn/ui: components are copy-pasted into your repo — you own 100% of the code. Built on Radix UI primitives for production-tested accessibility, with zero runtime overhead.

Tool	Role
Neon PostgreSQL 16	Serverless Postgres with branching — 1 project, 4 environment branches, free tier
Drizzle ORM	Pure TypeScript, no runtime binary — portable across local development, AWS Lambda, and Render.
Better Auth	Primary auth library — Google OAuth, RBAC plugin, session management
Better Auth Cloud	Free dashboard, audit logs, user management UI

Why Drizzle over Prisma: Drizzle is pure TypeScript with no runtime query-engine binary. That keeps Lambda packaging small and the data layer portable across local development, AWS, and the Render-hosted CMS.

Google OAuth only — no email/password. This eliminates credential stuffing, weak passwords, and reset flows. All salon customers in India have Google accounts.

Layer	Technology
Web + Admin Compute	AWS Lambda (ARM64) + CloudFront through SST `sst.aws.Nextjs`; OpenNext packages each Next.js app
Infrastructure as Code	SST v3 (`sst.config.ts`)
Authoritative DNS	Cloudflare DNS — SST manages required ACM validation and web/admin alias records; no application compute
CMS Hosting	Render (Singapore — `rgss-cms`, `cms.theroyalglow.in`)
PDF Rendering	Google Cloud Run (`apps/invoicing`)
Database	Neon DB (PostgreSQL, 4 branches)
Realtime	Ably (6M messages/mo free)
File Storage	Cloudflare R2 (10 GB free, zero egress)
Rate Limiting + Queue	Upstash Redis + QStash; Redis stores distributed API rate-limit state and QStash runs background jobs. Five-minute catalogue/availability caches are planned, not implemented.
CMS	Payload CMS v3 (self-hosted on Render, media to R2)
Documentation	Mintlify — `docs.theroyalglow.in`

Tool	Role
Resend	Transactional emails (invoices, booking confirmations)
React Email	Email templates in React/TypeScript
Brevo	Marketing/bulk emails with unsubscribe management

Tool	Purpose
Biome + Ultracite	Linting + formatting (replaces ESLint + Prettier — 100x faster)
Vitest	Unit & integration testing
React Testing Library	Component testing
Playwright	End-to-end testing (5 browsers)
MSW	API mocking (network-level, works in browser + Node)
k6	Load testing (target: 50 concurrent on pprd)
Lighthouse CI	Performance gate — ≥95 score required to merge
Trivy + Semgrep + Socket.dev	Security scanning (deps, SAST, supply chain)
Husky + lint-staged	Pre-commit hooks (lint + format on staged files)
Checkly	Synthetic monitoring (real Playwright scripts in prod)

Layer	Tool	Free Tier
Error monitoring	Sentry	5k errors/mo
Uptime + status + jobs + logs	BetterStack	10 monitors, 1 GB logs/mo
Product analytics	PostHog	1M events/mo
Heatmaps + session recordings	Microsoft Clarity	Free forever

Tool	Role
AiSensy	WhatsApp lead management — shared team inbox, Meta Click-to-WhatsApp
Meta Pixel	Browser-side event tracking
Meta Conversions API (CAPI)	Server-side event tracking — reliable, unaffected by iOS privacy
Custom `/admin/leads`	In-house lead pipeline — reads directly from Neon DB

Why no external CRM: all customer and booking data lives in Neon DB. An external CRM would require a continuous sync pipeline, creating two sources of truth. The CRM is built as admin views inside the app.

Design Principles

Lighthouse gates: performance ≥ 95; accessibility, best practices, and SEO = 100
Premium feel — rich, high-end aesthetic matching the brand
CloudFront-backed delivery — static assets served near users; dynamic requests route to Lambda
Single developer — tooling must minimise ops overhead
₹0/month at launch — every service on a free tier

Technology Decision Log

Key decisions where alternatives were seriously considered. Expand each to see what was rejected and why.

Auth → Better Auth (rejected: Clerk, Auth.js)

Self-hosted, the Google consent screen shows your domain, and it ships a built-in RBAC plugin. Clerk and Auth.js were rejected on hosting/branding and missing native RBAC.

ORM → Drizzle (rejected: Prisma)

Drizzle is pure TypeScript with no runtime query-engine binary, keeping Lambda packaging small and the data layer portable across AWS, local development, and the Render CMS.

Database → Neon (rejected: Supabase, PlanetScale)

Git-like branching (10 free branches), serverless scale-to-zero, and all scheduled work driven via QStash HTTP routes.

Compute → AWS Lambda + CloudFront through SST

apps/web and apps/admin each deploy as an SST sst.aws.Nextjs component. OpenNext packages the application, Lambda runs SSR/API compute, and CloudFront delivers each app. Cloudflare remains authoritative DNS and R2 storage; Payload CMS stays on Render and invoicing stays on Cloud Run.

Realtime → Ably (rejected: Pusher)

6M messages/mo free versus Pusher’s 200k/day.

Analytics → PostHog (rejected: Google Analytics)

DPDP Act concerns with GA. PostHog offers 1M events/mo plus feature flags.

Linting → Biome (rejected: ESLint + Prettier)

~100x faster, a single config file, and native TypeScript support.

Architecture

How these technologies fit together as a layered monorepo

Data Model

The 38-table Drizzle schema running on Neon

System Design

High-level and low-level design documents

Getting started

System design

Standards

Application surface

Platform

Quality & security

Operations

Delivery workflow

The Stack by Layer

Design Principles

Technology Decision Log

Architecture

Data Model

System Design

​The Stack by Layer

​Design Principles

​Technology Decision Log

​Related Pages

Architecture

Data Model

System Design

The Stack by Layer

Design Principles

Technology Decision Log

Related Pages