Player Pool

Private youth travel baseball pool. Parents list a player. Coaches our staff has approved can search. Players are shown as Player #NNN, with state and county only.

Parents can create, edit, pause, and delete player profiles. Approved coaches can search, filter, save searches, and keep private notes. Relay email and payments come later.

Stack

• Next.js (App Router) on Vercel
• Neon Postgres, migrations in drizzle/
• Clerk for sign-in (parent, coach, admin)

Stripe and Resend are not installed yet.

What Eric needs to provision

In the Vercel project player-pool on team coach-eric, install from the Marketplace:

1. Neon — creates DATABASE_URL (pooled). Also copy the direct connection string into DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED if migrations cannot run through the pooled URL.
2. Clerk — creates NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY and CLERK_SECRET_KEY.

Then set the public URLs (Clerk → Paths, or Vercel env):

Variable	Value
NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_SIGN_IN_URL	/sign-in
NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_SIGN_UP_URL	/sign-up
NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_SIGN_IN_FALLBACK_REDIRECT_URL	/continue
NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_SIGN_UP_FALLBACK_REDIRECT_URL	/parent

NEXT_PUBLIC_* values are read at build time. Set them before deploying. DATABASE_URL is read at runtime.

Redeploy after the keys exist. npm run build also succeeds with none of them set; player pages then redirect to sign-in and stay empty.

Make your user an admin

Set ADMIN_EMAILS on Vercel (production and preview) to a comma-separated list of verified primary emails. It is server-only. Do not prefix it with NEXT_PUBLIC_.

Sign up at /sign-up with one of those emails, then open /admin. Player Pool checks that the primary email is verified, saves role=admin, and sets Clerk public metadata { "role": "admin" } so it sticks. An unverified address does not match.

Setting that metadata by hand in the Clerk dashboard still works. The first visit to /admin copies it into Postgres. The admin link is not in the public footer.

Parents can only sign up at /sign-up. Coaches use /coach/signup, land in pending, and cannot open player pages until you approve them.

The coaches-first launch leaves PLAYER_SIGNUP_OPEN unset. Parent sign-up buttons say coming soon, /sign-up does not create a parent account, and a non-admin cannot add a player or start checkout. Set PLAYER_SIGNUP_OPEN=true when parents should list players. Admins can still create test players. Set APP_URL=https://player-pool.net so checkout return URLs and message links use that origin.

Local setup

npm install
cp .env.example .env.local
# fill in Neon + Clerk, then:
npm run db:migrate
npm run dev

For a temporary Clerk dev instance without creating a production app first:

npx clerk@latest init

That writes keys into .env.local. Do not commit that file.

Apply the schema with:

npm run db:migrate

drizzle-kit prefers DATABASE_URL_UNPOOLED, then DATABASE_URL. The first migration creates every table and seeds the baseball sport.

Routes in this session

Route	Who
/, /privacy, /terms, /conduct	Public
/sign-up	Parents only
/coach/signup	Coach requirements. New coaches are pending
/coach/search, /players/[id]	Approved coaches, or the parent who owns that player
/parent, /parent/player/new, /parent/player/[id]	That parent
/admin	Eric (role=admin) — Pending / Approved / Suspended

Next.js 16 calls the request gate src/proxy.ts (this used to be middleware.ts). It sends X-Robots-Tag: noindex on app routes. Public marketing pages can be indexed; player and account pages cannot.

Safety rules already enforced

• No player name, town, street, email, or phone columns.
• Coach-visible player data goes through toPublicPlayer (Player #NNN, state, county, and baseball fields only).
• A coach in pending, denied, or suspended cannot open search or a player page.
• A blocked coach cannot read that parent's player (the block table is in place; the block button is later).
• Coach search hides unpaid and expired profiles only when REQUIRE_PAID_LISTING=true. Until that flag is on, a profile is visible when it is not paused and not deleted. Parents can open their own player either way.
• Admin is the only place coach email, phone, and reference contact are rendered.

Pricing copy

One-time payments, no auto-renew. Season $25 for the season you choose. Yearly $60 is 12 months: that season and the next two. Spring 2027 is November 1, 2026 through May 31, 2027. Summer is June 1–August 31. Fall is September 1–October 31. The first 100 season listings can use code FIRST25. A refund is available for 15 days if no coach has viewed the profile since payment. Legal pages are version 2026-11-09. The live Stripe coupon may still be capped at 25 until it is updated in the Dashboard.

Run npm run stripe:setup with STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, then set STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET. Set REQUIRE_PAID_LISTING=true at launch. CRON_SECRET protects the daily expiry check.

Approved coaches message parents from a player profile. Parents reply in /parent/inbox. Neither side sees the other's email or phone. If RESEND_API_KEY and NOTIFY_FROM_EMAIL are set, each new message also sends a notice with a link and no message body. A parent can block or report a coach from a thread or the viewed list. A report suspends that coach until staff reinstates them on /admin.