AI Wrapper on Next.js 16 (App Router), MySQL 8 and Better Auth
Type-checked against the real SDKs, migration applied to a live MySQL 8, connection clients load-tested, then tracked for upstream drift and re-verified when it moves. How we verify
session validation runs in server components and route handlers, not at the edge
What you're getting
Next.js 16 App Router — file-based routing, server components, and the Edge proxy (Next 16's renamed middleware).
MySQL 8 via Drizzle ORM and the mysql2 driver.
Better Auth — self-hosted auth running inside your app against your Postgres (Drizzle adapter).
AI-wrapper app — per-user profile extending Better Auth, per-call token metering, and append-only prompt/completion history.
Setup
bun add next react react-dom drizzle-orm mysql2 better-authDATABASE_URLMySQL connection string (mysql://…)BETTER_AUTH_SECRETgenerate with `openssl rand -base64 32`BETTER_AUTH_URLyour app's base URLApply the schema with bunx drizzle-kit push
Initialization
Database client
AI app schema: user profiles, token metering & prompt logs
User profiles extending Better Authone profile per Better Auth user, carrying default model preference and soft monthly token budget
Per-call token usage & cost meteringappend-only rows (one per upstream LLM call) that drive the per-user budget rollup and cost reporting
Prompt & completion log historyauditable record of every exchange — prompt, completion, token split, latency, and ok/error/filtered status
Deploy targets
Decisions and compatibility
Auth runs in proxy.ts (Next 16's renamed middleware) on the Edge runtime: it gates on the session cookie's presence only — full session validation happens in Server Components and route handlers, not in the proxy.
mysql2's pool multiplexes connections; drizzle-orm/mysql2 wraps it. One module-level pool is right for a serverless/edge app — the runtime and the pool handle concurrency.
MySQL has no row-level security: multi-tenant isolation is enforced in application code via the forOrg helper (src/lib/tenant.ts), not by the database. See the tenant-scoping section on SaaS pages.
Self-hosted: Better Auth owns the user/session/account/verification tables. This stack emits them (db/auth-schema.ts) and hands them to the Drizzle adapter, so app-type schemas can foreign-key `user` directly.
user_profiles.userId carries a UNIQUE constraint — it is the 1:1 extension of Better Auth's user row; the FK itself is the identity, so no separate join table is needed.
token_usage is append-only and stores cost as costMicrocents (bigint integer): no float money, fine-grained enough for sub-cent per-token pricing without a numeric type.
MySQL provides no row-level security. On MySQL, multi-tenant isolation is APP-ENFORCED via the forOrg helper (src/lib/tenant.ts), not database-enforced like Postgres RLS. Every org-scoped query MUST go through forOrg — a missed query leaks across tenants. Postgres cells enforce this in the database itself (RLS), so it holds even for a query that forgets to scope.