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: ₹0. Every service runs on a free tier that is generous enough for a salon at this scale. The whole stack is edge-first, India-first (DPDP, IST, paise, GST 18%), and chosen so one developer can run it with minimal ops overhead.

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, edge-ready. `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 binary — edge-native, runs on Cloudflare Workers without adapters
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: Prisma’s Rust query engine binary cannot run in a V8 isolate (Cloudflare Workers) without workarounds or paid Prisma Accelerate. Drizzle is pure TypeScript and works everywhere.

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
Edge Hosting	Cloudflare Workers (OpenNext adapter — `rgss-web`, `rgss-admin`)
CMS Hosting	Render (Singapore, free tier — `rgss-cms`, `cms.theroyalglow.in`)
Database	Neon DB (PostgreSQL, 4 branches)
Realtime	Ably (6M messages/mo free)
File Storage	Cloudflare R2 (10 GB free, zero egress)
Cache + Queue	Upstash Redis + QStash
Edge Cache	Cloudflare KV (service catalog, 5-min TTL)
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
Edge-first — sub-100ms response times globally via Cloudflare
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)

Prisma’s query-engine binary can’t run on the Cloudflare Workers V8 isolate without paid Accelerate. Drizzle is pure TypeScript and runs everywhere.

Database → Neon (rejected: Supabase, PlanetScale)

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

Hosting → Cloudflare Workers (rejected: Vercel)

Cloudflare Workers via the OpenNext adapter (@opennextjs/cloudflare) — generous free tier with no bandwidth surprises, plus R2, KV, and Workers all under one roof.

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

Overview

Product

Features

Engineering

System design

Engineering standards

API reference

Application surface

Platform

Quality & security

Operations

Reference

Tech Stack

Tech Stack

The Stack by Layer

Design Principles

Technology Decision Log

Architecture

Data Model

System Design

​Tech Stack

​The Stack by Layer

​Design Principles

​Technology Decision Log

​Related Pages

Architecture

Data Model

System Design

Tech Stack

The Stack by Layer

Design Principles

Technology Decision Log

Related Pages