Notes / knowledge base on Nuxt 4, MySQL 8 and Clerk
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
Nuxt 4 (framework mode) — full-stack Vue SSR: client under app/ (Vite), server under server/ (Nitro), API as server/api/*.post.ts Nitro route handlers.
MySQL 8 via Drizzle ORM and the mysql2 driver.
Clerk — hosted identity (sign-in UI, sessions, user management) mounted via middleware + provider.
Notes / knowledge-base — user-owned notebooks, versioned notes, free-form tags, and per-note read/write sharing.
Setup
bun add nuxt vue drizzle-orm mysql2 @clerk/nextjsDATABASE_URLMySQL connection string (mysql://…)NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEYCLERK_SECRET_KEYCLERK_WEBHOOK_SECRETsvix secret that verifies Clerk webhook signaturesApply the schema with bunx drizzle-kit push
Initialization
Database client
Notes app schema: notebooks, notes, tags & sharing
Notebooks & notesthe owner-scoped notebook containers and the notes nested inside them, with archive support
Tagsfree-form text labels attached to individual notes, deduplicated by a composite unique constraint
Sharing & permissionsper-note grants to other users with a CHECK-enforced read/write permission level
Verified identity sync (Clerk)
Deploy targets
Decisions and compatibility
Client/server split: the DB client, Drizzle schema, records, and webhooks are server-side (server/). The `@/` alias is the client root (app/); server code reaches shared modules via Nuxt's `~~` rootDir alias (e.g. `~~/server/db/schema`).
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.
Hosted: Clerk owns identity and does NOT create a local `user` table. Store `clerk_user_id` as text without a foreign key, or sync Clerk users into a local table via webhook before relying on FKs to `user`.
note_tags enforces a unique constraint on (note_id, tag), so duplicate tags per note are rejected at the DB level rather than in application code.
note_shares carries a CHECK constraint limiting permission to 'read' or 'write', and a composite unique on (note_id, shared_with) — one share row per user per note, updated in place rather than appended.
Clerk is a hosted identity provider and does not create a local `user` table. This schema's foreign keys to `user` assume a local identity table (as Better Auth provides). With Clerk, store `clerk_user_id` as a text column without a foreign key, or sync Clerk users into a local `users` table via webhook before relying on these FKs.
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.