R&D + Developer Portfolio
This monorepo is where I run personal experiments and host my work in production - one codebase for building, testing, and shipping ideas I care about.
It focuses on practical full-stack patterns: type-safe APIs, content pipelines, background jobs, caching, and observability, while staying fast to iterate and reliable to operate.
Inspired by
saas.recipes playbooksArchitecture
System Design
Built with Turborepo and pnpm, the workspace follows a layered architecture with explicit package boundaries:
Layer
Presentation
@mcdougald/portfolio-website with Next.js App Router + React Server Components.
Layer
Service
API routes, typed procedures, and backend jobs for async workflows.
Layer
Data
PostgreSQL on Neon with Drizzle ORM, migrations, and SQL-first schema control.
73 tables across auth, portfolio, saas, monitoring, and system domains.
Layer
Platform
Shared auth, i18n, caching, env validation, email templates, and API clients.
This structure allows UI, application logic, and data infrastructure to evolve independently while preserving end-to-end type contracts across the system.
Workspaces (13)
@mcdougald/portfolio-website
Main product surface and user experience.
418 .ts files · 110 deps
@mcdougald/backend
Worker and scheduler runtime for data sync and archive analysis jobs.
1215 .ts files · 36 deps
@mcdougald/ui
Shared design system and component primitives (281+ components).
261 .ts files · 112 deps
@mcdougald/core
Core utilities, constants, and cross-package helpers.
32 .ts files · 11 deps
@mcdougald/db
Database schemas, migrations, and repository access patterns.
91 .ts files · 14 deps
@mcdougald/i18n
Localization primitives and locale-aware formatting.
16 .ts files · 0 deps
@mcdougald/env
Type-safe runtime configuration.
2 .ts files · 2 deps
@mcdougald/auth
Authentication and session utilities.
4 .ts files · 5 deps
@mcdougald/api
External API clients and adapters.
18 .ts files · 8 deps
@mcdougald/content-collections
Typed content ingestion and validation.
0 .ts files · 0 deps
Tech Stacks
Frontend, UI/UX, Wireframes
- Next.js with server rendering and route-level composition
- TypeScript strict mode across every package
- Tailwind CSS + Radix UI for accessible, scalable UI systems
- Framer Motion for performance-conscious interaction design
- MDX + Content Collections for typed content-as-code workflows
Backend, Database, Workers
- oRPC for typed client/server procedure contracts
- Drizzle ORM with explicit schema evolution and SQL-first control
- Better Auth for secure authentication and session lifecycle management
- Upstash Redis for distributed caching and request rate control
- Queue-driven background processing for GitHub ingestion, enrichment, and repository analytics
DevOps, SRE, QA
- Vercel for global deployment and rapid iteration
- Umami for privacy-focused product analytics
- Playwright for end-to-end confidence on critical journeys
- Vitest for unit and integration testing
- Biome + strict TypeScript for consistent code quality at scale
Frontend Research
The @mcdougald/ui package is a long-running design-system effort focused on composability, accessibility, and implementation quality. Through a disciplined component practice, it has grown into 281+ production-ready components that are reused throughout the workspace.
Component Architecture
- UI Primitives (47) - Accessible building blocks with consistent APIs
- Animated Components (67) - Motion-rich interactions tuned for responsiveness
- Specialized Components (50+) - Domain-specific UI for complex product scenarios
- Library Integrations (15+) - Curated wrappers around third-party APIs
- Custom Hooks (105) - Reusable logic for data, state, and side effects
- Frontend Libraries - Built with a component stack around Radix UI primitives, Framer Motion interactions, React Query state orchestration, and Lucide iconography.