SHIPPED SYSTEM · LIVE · 2026
Backend.ly
ENGINEERING PLATFORM / SAAS
The operating platform this site runs on — requests, projects, releases and incidents managed as one engineered system.
ROLE: PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE, FULL-STACK ENGINEERING, DESIGN SYSTEM, INFRASTRUCTURE AND DAY-TO-DAY OPERATION.
THE PROBLEM
Freelance web work usually collapses into scattered tools: email threads for scope, spreadsheets for tasks, ad-hoc servers for deploys and silence for status. Clients cannot see progress; the engineer cannot enforce process; nothing compounds into a system.
CONTEXT
Backend.ly is itself a one-engineer web business serving clients who need serious web work without agency overhead. The platform is not a showcase piece — it is the production system the business runs on: every request, proposal, invoice, release and deployment on this site flows through it.
WHAT WE BUILT
A complete client-to-production platform: a structured intake (START A PROJECT) that turns business needs into engineering briefs, a workspace with projects, tasks, milestones, approvals and change requests, a delivery layer with releases, deployments and incident management, plus a digital market with licensing, orders and payments — all behind authentication with role-scoped access.
Architecture
- 01
Single application, one source of truth
Marketing site, client workspace, admin command center and APIs live in one Next.js application against one database. No sync jobs between a website and a project tool, because they are the same system.
- 02
Intake compiles into engineering artifacts
The 6-step START A PROJECT wizard produces an EngineeringBrief, which expands into Requirements and Definition-of-Done items with explicit approvals — so the build phase starts from structure, not from a chat thread.
- 03
Operate as a first-class phase
Releases, Deployments, Incidents and IncidentEvents are modeled as data, not logged in chat. The public /status page reads the same tables — real probes, real incident history, no hand-written status.
- 04
CMS as content platform, not page builder
Site copy, founder profile and legal pages are stored as structured settings with code defaults — editable without deploys, versionable, and safe: content cannot alter application behavior.
Technology
NEXT.JS 16REACT 19TYPESCRIPTPRISMASQLITENODE.JSTAILWIND CSSNGINXSYSTEMD
The engineering
Authentication and roles
Custom JWT-based auth with email verification, password reset flows, and role-scoped dashboards for clients, admins and the founder operator.
Email infrastructure
A transactional email layer with provider abstraction, per-event templates, delivery records and admin-visible email history.
Payments and licensing
The digital market sells digital products with orders, payments, a ledger, and a license verification API for delivered software.
Protected API surface
Admin and client APIs are guarded by middleware and role checks; protected routes are covered by a route-parity guard that runs before every deployment.
Deployment discipline
Standalone builds, pre-deploy integrity gates, database-safety rules (production DB is never overwritten by a deploy), and verified rollbacks.
Decisions worth explaining
Build the platform instead of assembling SaaS tools
WHY The workflow — brief → requirements → build → review → ship → operate — is the product. Owning it end-to-end keeps the process coherent and the data compounding, at the cost of building and operating everything.
SQLite over a database server
WHY One writer, one machine, serious integrity requirements. A single-file database with built-in integrity checks removes an entire class of operational failure for this scale — and backups are file copies.
Public status page backed by real probes
WHY Trust comes from evidence. The status page renders the same incident and health data the operator sees — nothing curated.
Outcome
A live platform that runs a real business: client work enters as structured requests, proceeds through gated engineering phases, and ships with releases and incident history attached. The site you are reading is served by it.