Gym Management Platform

Project Overview

Architecture

• Next.js frontend application for administrative and member-facing interfaces
• NestJS backend API for business rules and server-side application behavior
• PostgreSQL relational database for application persistence
• Drizzle ORM for typed relational database access
• Better Auth for authentication and authorization
• Role-based access model for owners, administrators, instructors, and members
• Feature-oriented application organization designed around business workflows rather than technical layers alone
• Shared TypeScript contracts where appropriate between frontend and backend systems

Engineering Decisions

• Separated frontend presentation from backend business rules while maintaining one coordinated project
• Designed owner and administrator workflows before expanding lower-priority user features
• Used explicit role-based authorization instead of scattering permission checks across UI components
• Organized application features around real gym workflows instead of exposing internal technical structure to end users
• Used relational data modeling for members, locations, plans, roles, and lifecycle relationships
• Avoided prematurely building features that were not required by current workflows
• Kept architecture modular so billing, scheduling, attendance, reporting, and other future capabilities can be added incrementally

Challenges

• Designing permissions that remain understandable as roles and capabilities expand
• Keeping business rules separate from frontend presentation
• Modeling member lifecycle behavior without creating unnecessary complexity
• Designing administrative workflows that remain approachable for non-technical users
• Balancing long-term SaaS extensibility with the need to avoid premature abstractions

Testing & Validation

• The platform remains in active development
• Regression testing is added alongside implemented functionality
• Backend API behavior is validated before features are considered complete
• Frontend workflows are validated against expected role permissions
• Authentication, authorization, and lifecycle behavior are tested as those features are implemented
• Build, lint, formatting, and automated test validation are used before integration