Empire Claims Group

Premium public website and back-office Claims Management CRM for Empire Claims Group, a California public adjusting firm (License No. 2N60148).

This project was originally built on the Manus platform and has been migrated to a fully self-contained codebase that builds and runs from GitHub — no platform lock-in.

Projects in this repository

Path	Project
/ (root)	Empire Claims Group — public website + back-office Claims Management CRM
top-dawg-fe-smart-quote/	Top Dawg FE Smart Quote — final-expense quoting and case-placement platform for licensed agents (Next.js + PostgreSQL). See its README.

The two applications are independent: separate package.json, separate dependencies, separate database, separate CI workflow. Commands below apply to the Empire Claims Group app at the repository root.

What's inside

• Public website (/, /about, /services, /claims, /faq, /contact) — dark luxury marketing site with a free-claim-review form that saves inquiries to the database.
• Back office (/admin) — secure, role-based claims management: dashboard, claims pipeline, inspections, adjusters, documents, tasks, analytics, and settings.

Tech stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React 18, Vite, wouter, TanStack Query, Framer Motion, Recharts
API	tRPC v11 over Express
Database	MySQL via Drizzle ORM
Auth	Username/password (bcrypt) with signed JWT session cookies
Storage	Local disk (/uploads), pluggable for S3/R2

Getting started

1. Install dependencies

npm install

2. Configure environment

cp .env.example .env
# then edit .env — at minimum set JWT_SECRET and DATABASE_URL

3. Start a database (optional but needed for the CRM)

A local MySQL is provided via Docker:

docker compose up -d

Then create the tables:

npm run db:push

The public website runs fine without a database. The admin CRM requires DATABASE_URL to be set.

4. Create the first admin

Either run the seed script:

npm run seed:admin -- admin "your-strong-password" "Your Name"

…or just open /admin in the browser — on first run it shows a one-time setup form to create the initial admin account.

5. Run the app

npm run dev

Visit http://localhost:3000 for the website and http://localhost:3000/admin for the back office.

Available scripts

Script	Description
npm run dev	Start the dev server (Express + Vite HMR)
npm run build	Build the client into dist/
npm start	Run the production server (serves dist/)
npm run typecheck	TypeScript type checking
npm test	Run the test suite (Vitest)
npm run db:push	Push the Drizzle schema to the database
npm run db:studio	Open Drizzle Studio
npm run seed:admin	Create the first admin account

Deploying

Option A — Free static website (no server, no database)

Deploy just the public marketing site to a free static host (Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages…). The contact form is delivered to your email via Formspree instead of the database, so no server is needed. The /admin CRM is not available in this mode.

1. Create a free form at formspree.io and copy its endpoint (e.g. https://formspree.io/f/xxxxxxxx).
2. Push this repo to GitHub, then import it on vercel.com (or netlify.com). The included vercel.json / netlify.toml set the build automatically: build command npm run build, output directory dist.
3. In the host's Environment Variables, add VITE_FORMSPREE_ENDPOINT = your Formspree endpoint from step 1.
4. Deploy. Your site is live on a free URL (add a custom domain anytime).

Option B — Full app (website + CRM)

1. Provision a MySQL database and set DATABASE_URL, plus a strong JWT_SECRET.
2. npm ci && npm run build
3. npm start (serves the built site and the API on PORT, default 3000).

Any host that runs Node.js works (Render, Railway, Fly.io, a VPS, etc.). For uploaded documents to persist across deploys, point UPLOAD_DIR at a mounted volume or swap server/storage.ts for cloud object storage.

User roles

• admin / manager — full access to all claims, users, and settings.
• adjuster — staff access to claims, inspections, tasks, and documents.

Project layout

src/            React front end (pages, components, hooks)
server/         Express + tRPC API, database access, auth
  _core/        Framework glue: tRPC context, cookies, auth, notifications
drizzle/        Database schema (Drizzle ORM)
shared/         Constants shared by client and server
scripts/        Operational scripts (admin seeding)
docs/           Original product spec and design notes