Better Writer

Read. Remember. Write.

Better Writer is a daily writing habit app:

• Read a short curated passage today.
• Write about it from memory two days later.
• Build consistency over time.

Screenshots

This repository is a Bun + Turborepo monorepo.

Apps

• apps/web - Next.js 15 backend + web landing pages
• apps/ios - Native iOS app (Xcode project)

Requirements

• Bun (latest)
• Node.js (for Next.js tooling compatibility)
• Xcode (for iOS development)

Getting Started

Install dependencies:

bun install

Run all dev targets:

bun run dev

Run only web app:

bunx turbo dev --filter=web

Build all targets:

bun run build

Lint all targets:

bun run lint

Database Commands

bun run db:generate
bun run db:push

Environment

Create env vars for apps/web before running locally.

Required variables include:

• AUTH_SECRET
• TURSO_DATABASE_URL
• TURSO_AUTH_TOKEN
• UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL
• UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN
• QSTASH_TOKEN
• QSTASH_CURRENT_SIGNING_KEY
• QSTASH_NEXT_SIGNING_KEY
• MEM0_API_KEY
• EXA_API_KEY

See apps/web/.env.example for the template.

Technologies

Web (apps/web)

Technology	Purpose
Next.js 16	Full-stack React framework. Handles API routes, server-side rendering for the marketing landing pages, and the proxy layer (edge request interception).
React 19	UI library for the web frontend. The app is mostly server-rendered; there are no client-side components with heavy state.
TypeScript	Static typing across the entire web codebase with strict: true.
Drizzle ORM	Type-safe SQL query builder and migration toolkit. Used to define the schema (users, entries) and interact with the database.
Turso (libSQL)	Serverless SQLite-compatible database. Stores user accounts and writing entries, partitioned by day index.
Vercel AI SDK (ai v6)	Core AI generation primitives (streamText). Manages streaming lifecycle, tool calling, and provider abstraction.
@mem0/vercel-ai-provider	Drop-in AI provider wrapper that adds long-term memory to AI responses. Each generation can recall previous interactions for the same user.
Upstash Redis	In-memory data store used for two things: durable SSE stream state (buffering delta events for reconnection) and distributed entity locking (SET NX) to prevent duplicate generation jobs.
QStash (@upstash/qstash)	HTTP-based durable message queue. Enqueues background AI generation jobs and delivers them with at-least-once guarantees and signature verification.
@upstash/workflow	Durable workflow engine built on QStash. Wraps multi-step AI generation inside a serve() handler so long-running jobs survive serverless cold starts and timeouts.
Exa	AI-native search API. Used to curate and discover high-quality reading passages for users.
Zod	Schema declaration and validation library. All API request bodies and parameters are validated with Zod safeParse before reaching business logic.
Biome	All-in-one linter and formatter (replaces ESLint + Prettier). Enforces code style on all JS/TS/JSON/CSS files.

iOS (apps/ios)

Technology	Purpose
SwiftUI	Declarative UI framework for building the native iOS app. All screens are SwiftUI views driven by a phase-based state machine (AppPhase).
SwiftData	Apple's persistence framework. Stores the local user profile (UserProfile) and writing entries (DayEntry) on-device.
Swift Concurrency (async/await, actor)	Used throughout the networking layer. APIClient is an actor to serialize access and prevent data races.

Monorepo & Tooling

Technology	Purpose
Bun	JavaScript runtime and package manager. Manages workspaces and runs all scripts significantly faster than npm/yarn.
Turborepo	Monorepo build orchestration. Caches build and lint outputs and runs tasks across workspaces in the correct dependency order.
Husky + lint-staged	Git hooks. pre-commit runs Biome on staged JS/TS files and swift-format on staged Swift files. commit-msg enforces Conventional Commits via commitlint.

License

Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. See LICENSE.