The public journal of Project Sidekick. Essays, plans, decisions, builds, and notes — written while building a personal operating system in the open.https://arkive.blog/https://arkive.blog/plans/implementation-plan/https://arkive.blog/plans/implementation-plan/Tasks are grouped into phases. Each phase is a shippable milestone — by the end of it, something real and working exists that you can use, demo, or build on top of. Phases are sequenced to minimize…Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/plans/sidekick-phase0-plan/https://arkive.blog/plans/sidekick-phase0-plan/Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/plans/sidekick-phase1-plan/https://arkive.blog/plans/sidekick-phase1-plan/By the end of this phase you can:Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/decisions/auth/https://arkive.blog/decisions/auth/User profiles are created by a Postgres trigger, not an API route.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/decisions/copy/https://arkive.blog/decisions/copy/All user-visible strings (labels, error messages, button text, page titles, navigation items, etc.) live in `packages/copy`. Source files never contain hardcoded strings.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/decisions/error-handling-and-instrumentation/https://arkive.blog/decisions/error-handling-and-instrumentation/Some failures should crash the process or return an error immediately:Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/decisions/standards-and-guidelines/https://arkive.blog/decisions/standards-and-guidelines/TypeScript types are erased at runtime. They cannot be used to validate data that arrives from outside the codebase — user inputs, API request bodies, query parameters, external API responses, and …Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/decisions/supabase-and-api-related/https://arkive.blog/decisions/supabase-and-api-related/Current API routes live at `/api/` with no version prefix. Versioning (`/api/v1/`, `/api/v2/`) is deferred.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/decisions/tooling-decisions/https://arkive.blog/decisions/tooling-decisions/What we chose: Corepack (`corepack enable` + `corepack use pnpm@latest`) rather than `npm install -g pnpm`.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/builds/00-config-files-explained/https://arkive.blog/builds/00-config-files-explained/```yamlFri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/builds/01-checkpoint-a-walkthrough/https://arkive.blog/builds/01-checkpoint-a-walkthrough/Verify your environment:Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/builds/02-checkpoint-b-walkthrough/https://arkive.blog/builds/02-checkpoint-b-walkthrough/Create `tsconfig.base.json` at the repo root. This is the single source of truth for TypeScript settings shared across every package.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/builds/03-checkpoint-c-walkthrough/https://arkive.blog/builds/03-checkpoint-c-walkthrough/```bashFri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/builds/04-checkpoint-d-walkthrough/https://arkive.blog/builds/04-checkpoint-d-walkthrough/Create `.env.example` at the repo root. This file is safe to commit — it contains no real values, only variable names and documentation.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/builds/walkthrough/https://arkive.blog/builds/walkthrough/This guide walks through reproducing Phase 1 step by step. It assumes you have completed Phase 0: the monorepo is set up with Turborepo, pnpm workspaces, TypeScript, ESLint, Prettier, and `apps/web…Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/notes/architecture-handover/https://arkive.blog/notes/architecture-handover/This application is a modular, API-first productivity platform built as:Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/notes/architecture-overview/https://arkive.blog/notes/architecture-overview/A monorepo is a single git repository that contains multiple applications and shared packages. Sidekick has:Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/notes/auth/https://arkive.blog/notes/auth/This document explains authentication from first principles, then shows how Supabase implements it and how Sidekick's architecture builds on top of it.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/notes/nextjs/https://arkive.blog/notes/nextjs/This document covers the Next.js App Router patterns that come up repeatedly in Sidekick. It focuses on the "why" behind each concept, not just the "what".Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/notes/packages/https://arkive.blog/notes/packages/This document covers how packages in a pnpm monorepo expose their API, declare dependencies, and share code through workspace linking and hoisting.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/notes/supabase/https://arkive.blog/notes/supabase/This document explains the key Supabase and database concepts introduced in Phase 1, with enough context that you understand not just what to do but why each piece exists.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/notes/tooling/https://arkive.blog/notes/tooling/This document covers the monorepo tooling decisions introduced in Phase 1: pnpm flags, Turborepo configuration, TypeScript module resolution, ESLint setup, and package conventions.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/notes/typescript/https://arkive.blog/notes/typescript/This document covers TypeScript compilation concepts and bundler behaviour as they apply to the Sidekick monorepo.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/notes/vercel/https://arkive.blog/notes/vercel/This document covers what Vercel provides out of the box and where its built-in capabilities are sufficient vs. where a dedicated tool (like Sentry) becomes necessary.Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://arkive.blog/essays/kickoff/https://arkive.blog/essays/kickoff/Why I'm spending the next 3 years building Sidekick in the open — mastering the full stack without vibe-coding.Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT