Arawn

Production-ready TypeScript monorepo with Next.js 15, NestJS 11, Turborepo and other modern technologies. Everything you need to ship fast.

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Why Arawn?

Stop wasting days bootstrapping your next project. Most templates hand you a skeleton and leave you to figure out database migrations, API documentation, logging infrastructure, and much more. Arawn ships with all of it configured and working. You just need to run a single script to get started with a production-ready full-stack application.

This is not your average starter template. It's a production foundation.

• Full-stack type safety: Zod schemas define your API contracts. Types flow from database to UI automatically without any hassle.
• Zero-config setup: One command creates env files, spins up docker, runs migrations, and gets you ready to ship in a fraction of the time.
• Production-grade authentication: Better-auth integration with email/password, session management, and OAuth ready (GitHub, Google). Protected routes and auth guards out of the box.
• Production-grade infrastructure: Global exception filter with request ID tracing, automatic Zod validation on all endpoints, rate limiting, environment-aware error responses
• Shared validation logic: Write your schemas once in shared/types, use them everywhere (frontend forms, API validation, DB queries)
• Real testing infrastructure: Vitest configured for frontend, backend, and shared packages with coverage reports
• Auto-generated API docs: Swagger + Scalar documentation generated directly from your Zod schemas
• AI pair programming ready: This template ships with a comprehensive CLAUDE.md file that means AI assistants understand your architecture instantly and can help accelerate your development process.

Arawn is built for teams shipping real products, not toy demos.

Getting Started

New to Arawn? Check out GETTING_STARTED.md for a streamlined setup guide. The template works out of the box - customiziation is optional!

Tech Stack

Frontend

• Next.js 15 + React 19
• TanStack Query v5 for server state
• shadcn/ui + Tailwind CSS v4
• React Hook Form + Zod validation
• Jotai for client state

Backend

• NestJS 11
• Prisma 6 + PostgreSQL 17
• Better-auth for authentication
• Pino for logging infrastructure
• Swagger + Scalar API docs
• Helmet + rate limiting

Monorepo

• pnpm workspaces + Turborepo
• Shared packages for types, utils, config
• Vitest for testing
• Husky + lint-staged for pre-commit hooks

Quick Start

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Automated setup (creates .env files, starts docker, runs migrations)
pnpm init:project

# Start development
pnpm dev

The setup script handles everything: environment files, docker containers, database migrations, and optional seeding. Safe to run multiple times.

What's running:

• Frontend: http://localhost:3000
• Backend: http://localhost:8080
• API Docs: http://localhost:8080/docs

Database tools:

• Prisma Studio: Run pnpm db:studio to open http://localhost:5555 (recommended for data inspection)
• pgAdmin (optional): Run docker-compose --profile tools up -d for http://localhost:5050 (admin@example.com / admin123)

Built-in pages:

• /login - Sign in page
• /signup - Create new account
• /dashboard - Protected user dashboard
• /examples - Component examples

Requirements: Node.js ≥20, pnpm ≥9, docker

Project Structure

arawn/
├── apps/
│   ├── frontend/     # Next.js 15 app
│   └── backend/      # NestJS API
└── shared/
    ├── types/        # Zod schemas + inferred types
    └── utils/        # Shared utilities

Essential Commands

Development

pnpm dev              # Start all apps
pnpm build            # Build everything
pnpm typecheck        # Type check
pnpm test             # Run tests

Database (from apps/backend)

pnpm db:migrate       # Run migrations
pnpm db:studio        # Open Prisma Studio
pnpm db:seed          # Seed database
pnpm db:reset         # Fresh database

Key Features

Type Safety Everywhere

• Zod schemas in shared/types serve as single source of truth
• Types inferred from schemas (z.infer<typeof Schema>)
• Runtime validation on API requests and environment variables
• TypeScript strict mode across all packages

Smart Build Pipeline

• Turborepo orchestrates dependencies automatically
• Shared packages rebuild before apps consume them
• Intelligent caching speeds up subsequent builds
• Parallel execution where possible

Authentication & Security

• Better-auth with email/password authentication
• Session-based auth with 7-day expiration
• Protected routes with auth guards
• OAuth ready for GitHub and Google
• Helmet for secure HTTP headers
• Rate limiting (default 30 req/min per IP)
• CORS configured for frontend origin only
• Structured logging with Pino (request IDs, configurable verbosity)
• Environment validation on startup

Developer Experience

• One command setup with pnpm init:project
• Pre-commit hooks format and lint automatically
• Vitest for fast, modern testing
• API docs auto-generated from Zod schemas
• CLAUDE.md for AI pair programming context

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Design Principles

This template makes specific choices to optimize for production use:

1. Workspace dependencies over npm packages - Real monorepo benefits, not just code co-location
2. Zod as validation layer - One schema definition for runtime + compile-time safety
3. Opinionated tooling - Prettier, ESLint, Husky pre-configured so you can focus on features
4. Documentation for AI - Structured context files help AI assistants understand your codebase