Neuron

A volunteer management system for BC Brain Wellness Program.

Getting Started

To get a local copy up and running follow these simple steps.

Prerequisites

• Node.js and a pnpm
• Docker for local Postgres + Redis (install Docker Desktop locally)
• A local .env with required variables (see Environment)

This project uses:

• Postgres (via Drizzle ORM with postgres-js)
• Redis for caching
• Strict typed env validation (fails fast if required keys are missing)

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Environment

Create a .env in the repo root, following the format and content of .env

The app validates these at startup. If any are missing/malformed, it will exit with an error.

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Start the Dev Services (Docker)

Start Postgres and Redis locally:

1. Create or update your .env with the required variables used by Docker and the app. You can generate strong passwords with the helper script:

./gen-pass.sh

Example .env snippet for local dev:

# Drizzle
DATABASE_PASSWORD="password" // Change this to a generated password
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://postgres:password@localhost:5432/neuron" // Change "password" to the same as above

# Redis
REDIS_PASSWORD="password" // Change this to a generated password
REDIS_URL="redis://:password@localhost:6379/0" // Change "password" to the same as above

2. Start the containers using the provided scripts:

pnpm dev:up # starts postgres + redis in the background

To stop services:

pnpm dev:down

To flush Redis during development:

pnpm dev:redis:clear

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Install & Run

pnpm install
pnpm dev

This launches the Next.js app (frontend + tRPC backend) in development mode

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Database Migrations

This repo uses Drizzle. After Postgres is up, run migrations:

pnpm db:migrate

# Fallback:
pnpx drizzle-kit migrate

Migrations target Postgres and align with the schema under the src/server/db/schema module.

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Clean Up (Optional)

docker rm -f neuron-postgres neuron-redis
docker volume prune -f

Removing containers does not delete local data unless volumes were created and pruned.