HireStack

A two-sided job and freelance marketplace for people who want hiring software that behaves like a product, not a CRUD demo.

Candidates search crawlable listings, keep a resume history, apply once per job, and watch a real pipeline. Employers claim one company, post roles, and move applicants only along legal transitions. Admins suspend users, unpublish jobs, and clear the report queue.

Who it is for

Independent recruiters, early-stage operators, and portfolio reviewers who need evidence of RBAC, SSR search, file uploads, and a live deploy — not another todo app with a login screen.

Architecture

flowchart LR
  Browser["Angular 22 SSR<br/>hirestack-web"] -->|JSON + refresh cookie| API["NestJS Fluid Function<br/>hirestack-api"]
  API --> Neon["Neon Postgres<br/>Prisma + pg_trgm"]
  API --> Blob["Vercel Blob<br/>resumes + logos"]
  API --> Mail["Resend<br/>or structured logs"]

Loading

One pnpm monorepo. Two Vercel projects. Shared enums live in packages/shared so the UI cannot invent a status the API does not understand.

Domain

Jobs are DRAFT | PUBLISHED | CLOSED. Applications are a state machine, not a free-text dropdown:

SUBMITTED → REVIEWING → INTERVIEW → OFFER → HIRED
SUBMITTED / REVIEWING / INTERVIEW → REJECTED
Candidate may WITHDRAWN from SUBMITTED or REVIEWING only

Illegal transitions return 409 with error: ILLEGAL_TRANSITION. Apply + first ApplicationEvent run in a Prisma transaction. Duplicate (jobId, candidateId) is rejected.

Search uses ILIKE plus pg_trgm GIN indexes on Job.title and Job.location. Relevance sort ranks trigram similarity when q is present.

Stack and why

Choice	Why
Angular 22	Signal Forms, httpResource, @Service(), zoneless + OnPush default, Angular Aria
NestJS on Vercel Fluid	One function, zero-config src/main.ts + PORT detection. API runtime is Node 22.x (Fluid Node 24 currently crashes this Nest boot).
Neon + Prisma adapter	Serverless pooling without a standing Node process
Vercel Blob	Serverless uploads; no local disk
Postgres search	Honest v1. Dedicated search is the upgrade, not the starting point

Local setup

corepack enable
pnpm install
cp .env.example apps/api/.env
# fill DATABASE_URL, DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED, JWT secrets
pnpm prisma:migrate:dev
pnpm prisma:seed
pnpm dev

• API: http://localhost:3000/api/health and http://localhost:3000/api/docs
• Web: http://localhost:4200 (environment.development.ts points at the local API)

Seed accounts

Password for every seed user: HireStack!2026

Role	Email
Admin	admin@hirestack.dev
Employer (Northwind Labs)	employer.northwind@hirestack.dev
Employer (Atlas Freight)	employer.atlas@hirestack.dev
Employer (Lumen Studio)	employer.lumen@hirestack.dev
Candidate	candidate.alex@hirestack.dev … candidate.quinn@hirestack.dev

Seed load: 1 admin, 3 employers/companies, 8 candidates, 25 skills, 20 published jobs, 18 applications.

MCP deploy notes

1. Neon MCP — project hirestack (divine-moon-46584975). Schema applied with Prisma migrate; trigram indexes in prisma/migrations/20260819160618_trgm_indexes. Seed verified through run_sql / inspect_database.
2. Wire apps/api/.env with the pooled DATABASE_URL and unpooled DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED.
3. Vercel MCP / CLI — projects hirestack-api (prj_xDMCF55ThMXgZyVqeKVmuht4br7n, root apps/api) and hirestack-web (prj_vg09GADHx67h4aBvEsAgc5FpoUlZ, root apps/web) live on team criscode2022s-projects. Cursor Origin git linking needs a Vercel Login Connection. There is no env-var MCP tool; set secrets with vercel env add after VERCEL_TOKEN is available:

   export VERCEL_ORG_ID=team_XDogXucjsiIPPOiJSxbMGbSc
   npx vercel env add DATABASE_URL production --yes
   npx vercel env add DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED production --yes
   npx vercel env add JWT_ACCESS_SECRET production --yes
   npx vercel env add JWT_REFRESH_SECRET production --yes
   npx vercel env add BLOB_READ_WRITE_TOKEN production --yes
   npx vercel env add WEB_ORIGIN production --yes
   npx vercel --prod --yes

4. Deploy API first, set WEB_ORIGIN to https://hirestack-web.vercel.app, then deploy web.
5. Confirm /api/health returns { ok: true, db: true } and /api/docs loads.

Tests

pnpm test            # API unit tests (no live database)
pnpm test:smoke      # health, jobs, billing, seed login against local API + Neon
pnpm test:e2e        # Playwright against http://localhost:4200
pnpm typecheck

CI runs install, Prisma generate, unit tests, API lint/typecheck, and a development Angular build.

Live URLs

• Web (production): https://hirestack-web.vercel.app
• API (production): https://hirestack-api.vercel.app/api/health
• Swagger: https://hirestack-api.vercel.app/api/docs
• SaaS Git preview (this branch): https://hirestack-angular-web-git-cursor-81b4d2-criscode2022s-projects.vercel.app
• Neon project: hirestack (divine-moon-46584975)
• Vercel dashboards: hirestack-api · hirestack-web

Production Angular calls /api. On this branch apps/web/vercel.json rewrites that path to the Git preview Nest host until hirestack-api is promoted with billing. scripts/deploy-vercel.sh needs VERCEL_TOKEN. GitHub also deploys preview apps hirestack-nestjs-api and hirestack-angular-web; copy DATABASE_URL, JWT secrets, and WEB_ORIGIN to Preview or the Nest function boots without a database.

Trade-offs

• SSR vs CSR. Public job list, job detail, company profile, and landing render on the server so listings stay crawlable. Authenticated inbox and forms stay client-rendered.
• Serverless Nest cold starts. One Fluid Function is operationally simple. The cost is a wake-up on idle. Prisma uses the Neon adapter so the function does not hold a brittle TCP pool.
• Postgres search vs dedicated search. Trigram + ILIKE is enough for tens of thousands of jobs and keeps ranking next to relational filters. At marketplace scale, embeddings or OpenSearch would replace the relevance path only.

What is next

Stripe Checkout for live cards, custom domains, and embedding search. Messaging, featured inventory, and demo billing are in this build.

License

Private portfolio project.