Binary Semaphore

Marketing and portfolio site for Binary Semaphore, a small software team working across applied AI, distributed systems, and developer tools. Source for binarysemaphore.com.

Current focus: inode, a CLI knowledge base that retrieves notes, secrets, and commands by meaning instead of exact keywords.

Stack

• Next.js 16 (App Router) + TypeScript (strict)
• Tailwind CSS v4
• MDX content pipeline for /threads
• Vitest (unit) and Playwright (smoke)
• Deployed on Vercel

Getting started

npm install
npm run dev        # http://localhost:3000

Scripts

Script	What it does
npm run dev	Local dev server
npm run build	Production build
npm run start	Serve the production build
npm run lint	ESLint
npm run typecheck	tsc --noEmit
npm run test	Unit tests (Vitest)
npm run test:e2e	Smoke tests (Playwright)

Project structure

• src/app/ — routes (/, /about, /services, /projects, /team, /contact, /threads, plus /projects/[slug], /team/[slug], /threads/[slug]), layout.tsx, globals.css.
• src/components/ — section and UI components.
• src/lib/site.ts — single source of truth for all copy, links, the team, and projects. Edit copy here, not in components.
• src/content/threads/*.mdx — long-form posts; frontmatter parsed by src/lib/threads.ts.
• src/images/ — optimized photography (statically imported for blur-up).
• public/tech/ — technology logos for the stack section.
• e2e/ — Playwright smoke tests.

Editing content

All site copy and links live in src/lib/site.ts; components read from it. Long-form writing lives as MDX under src/content/threads.

Copy voice: plain and human, no em dashes, no marketing slogans. See AGENTS.md for the full guidelines.

Testing

npm run test       # Vitest unit tests (lib + site config invariants)
npm run test:e2e   # Playwright smoke tests (key routes, nav, contact)

Unit tests live next to the code as *.test.ts; smoke tests live in e2e/.

Backend (Supabase)

The backend is Supabase (hosted Postgres + Auth), called from inside the app via @supabase/ssr. No separate service to host.

1. Create a Supabase project and run supabase/schema.sql in its SQL editor.
2. Copy .env.example to .env.local and fill in NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL and NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY (Project Settings -> API). Add the same vars to the Vercel project env for production.
3. Clients live under src/utils/supabase/: server.ts (Server Components / Route Handlers / server actions), client.ts (browser), and middleware.ts (session refresh, wired in src/proxy.ts — Next 16's renamed middleware convention). They use the publishable key and respect row-level security.

Worked example: POST /api/contact (src/app/api/contact/route.ts) validates a submission and inserts it into the contact_messages table.

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/api/contact \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"name":"Ada","email":"ada@example.com","message":"hi"}'

Auth

Sign-in uses Supabase Auth with GitHub and Google OAuth. Flow: /login (buttons) -> provider -> /auth/callback (exchanges the code for a session) -> /account. Sign out posts to /auth/signout. Gate any page by calling getCurrentUser() from src/utils/supabase/auth.ts and redirecting to /login when it is null (see src/app/account/page.tsx).

To enable the providers (one-time, in dashboards):

1. Supabase -> Authentication -> Providers: enable GitHub and Google and paste each provider's Client ID/Secret.
   • GitHub: create an OAuth App at https://github.com/settings/developers. Authorization callback URL: https://<project-ref>.supabase.co/auth/v1/callback.
   • Google: create an OAuth client in Google Cloud Console (APIs & Services -> Credentials). Authorized redirect URI: the same Supabase callback URL.
2. Supabase -> Authentication -> URL Configuration: set the Site URL to the production URL and add redirect URLs https://binarysemaphore.com/auth/callback and http://localhost:3000/auth/callback.

Workflow

Work on a feature branch and open a pull request; main is updated only by merging a reviewed PR. Husky hooks enforce quality locally: pre-commit runs lint-staged (ESLint + Prettier on staged files), commit-msg checks the message against Conventional Commits (feat:, fix:, chore:, ...), and pre-push runs typecheck and unit tests.

CI/CD

GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/ci.yml) runs lint, typecheck, and tests on every push and pull request, then deploys via the Vercel CLI: a preview deployment for each PR and a production deployment on main. Requires the VERCEL_TOKEN, VERCEL_ORG_ID, and VERCEL_PROJECT_ID repository secrets.