Rag Release unifies Sri Lanka's fragmented self-publishing workflow — co-writing, cover design, editorial review, ISBN/certificate handling, publishing, and sales — into one platform connecting authors, designers, reviewers, publishers and readers. A Next.js frontend with a TipTap editor binds a Yjs CRDT shared peer-to-peer over WebRTC for conflict-free co-writing; two Express microservices (auth + book) share a JWT trust boundary, with Stripe payments and S3 presigned-URL asset delivery. I owned the SRS, architecture, all three services, and the release management.
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Rag Release - Collaborative Book Publishing Platform
Sole Developer — Final-Year Capstone
A real-time collaborative book-writing and self-publishing platform for Sri Lankan authors that carries a manuscript from co-written draft through cover design, editorial review, ISBN handling, and Stripe-powered sales — a Next.js frontend backed by two Dockerized Node.js microservices.
Role & Context
Individual Level 3 (final-year) capstone (student 215075J), supervised. A polyrepo of three services under the Rag-Release GitHub org — a Next.js frontend, a user-auth-service, and a book-service. I authored the IEEE 830-1998 SRS, the system architecture, all three services, and end-to-end deployment/release management. Corrected from an earlier 'team project' note — this was an individual capstone.
Problem
Sri Lanka's publishing industry leaves aspiring authors with limited access to professional publishers, weak distribution, financial barriers (e.g. VAT), and little guidance (ISBN acquisition, publishing-method choice). Authors stitch together disconnected tools for writing, cover design, ISBN handling, review, publishing and sales — with no single platform connecting the parties and no way to co-write in real time. Rag Release unifies that end to end.
Approach & Architecture
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Best Practices Followed
- Clean Architecture (ports & adapters): entities -> use-cases -> interface adapters -> frameworks, so business logic stays independent of Express/Sequelize/JWT and unit-testable
- Defense-in-depth API security: Helmet, env-aware CORS allowlist, IP rate limiting, Joi validation, body-size limits, and bcrypt hashing on every service
- Stateless JWT auth with short-lived access (15 min) + refresh-token rotation; one auth service is the trust boundary for the whole platform
- Role-Based Access Control: five roles (author, reviewer, designer, publisher, reader) enforced by route middleware, mapping to the real publishing workflow
- Reproducible DB releases: versioned, timestamped Sequelize migrations + seeders (up/undo) instead of hand-applied schema changes
- Operability built in: structured Winston logging with daily rotation and /health endpoints (uptime/memory/PID) for probes; GitFlow PR review gates
Challenges & Resolution
ChallengeThe book-service was first built on GraphQL (Apollo + TypeGraphQL), which diverged from the REST + JWT-middleware model of the auth service and made cross-service RBAC and validation inconsistent.
FixPivoted the service to Express + Sequelize REST under the same Clean Architecture as the auth service (git history shows the GraphQL implementation removed and re-implemented), unifying the middleware stack (Helmet/CORS/rate-limit/Joi/JWT) and simplifying role enforcement and deployment.
ChallengeSupporting multiple authors editing the same manuscript concurrently without a central lock or merge conflicts.
FixAdopted a Yjs CRDT bound to TipTap, synced peer-to-peer over WebRTC with a WebSocket signaling server for presence and live cursors. Known gap: the signaling endpoint still points at a local server, so a hosted signaling URL is required for production.
Outcomes
- A 3-tier, 3-repository microservices platform: one Next.js frontend + two Node.js services sharing a JWT trust boundary
- ~30+ REST endpoints across the auth domain (sign-up/in, refresh, logout, profile, account upgrade, payments) and book domain (book CRUD, content, cover/ISBN upload, publish, assign-reviewer, reviews, purchase, download)
- 5-role RBAC publishing workflow; real-time collaborative editor (Yjs CRDT, live cursors); Stripe e-commerce with webhooks; S3 presigned-URL assets
- Release deliverables: Dockerized services, Vercel CD for the frontend, 5 versioned auth-service migrations, and a GitFlow PR workflow (auth-service alone shows 24+ merged PRs)
Tech Stack
Next.jsReactTypeScriptRedux ToolkitTailwind CSSTipTapYjsy-webrtcNode.jsExpress.jsSequelizePostgreSQLJWTStripeAWS S3DockerVercel
Concepts & Skills Learnt
Microservices architecture (polyrepo)Clean Architecture (ports & adapters / hexagonal)RESTful API designJWT auth with access + refresh-token rotationRole-Based Access Control (RBAC)CRDT real-time collaboration (Yjs)WebRTC peer-to-peer + WebSocket signalingDocker containerizationGitFlow branching & PR review gatesDatabase migrations & seeding (Sequelize)AWS S3 presigned URLsStripe payment integration & webhooksDefense-in-depth API security (Helmet, CORS, rate limiting, Joi, bcrypt)Observability — structured logging & health checks (Winston)