LMS (learning platform) on Nuxt 4, Postgres (Neon) and Clerk
Type-checked against the real SDKs, migration applied to a live Postgres (Neon), 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.
Postgres on Neon via Drizzle ORM and the postgres-js driver.
Clerk — hosted identity (sign-in UI, sessions, user management) mounted via middleware + provider.
Learning platform — course catalog (courses → modules → lessons), enrollment join, and per-lesson learner progress tracking.
Setup
bun add nuxt vue drizzle-orm postgres @clerk/nextjsDATABASE_URLNeon pooled (-pooler) connection stringNEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEYCLERK_SECRET_KEYCLERK_WEBHOOK_SECRETsvix secret that verifies Clerk webhook signaturesApply the schema with bunx drizzle-kit push
Initialization
Database client
LMS schema: courses, modules, lessons, enrollments & progress
Courses & instructorscatalog root with slug unique index, status CHECK, and FK to the Better Auth instructor user
Modules & lessonsordered curriculum units — modules by position within a course, lessons by position within a module with contentType CHECK
Enrollmentscourse↔student join with composite unique enforcing one enrollment per pair
Lesson progress trackingper-learner, per-lesson state rows with status CHECK and composite unique on (studentId, lessonId)
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`).
prepare: false is mandatory — Neon's pooled endpoint is PgBouncer in transaction mode, where server-side prepared statements break across the pool.
Drizzle is paired here (not Prisma): Prisma's prepared-statement reliance is incompatible with transaction-mode pooling.
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`.
Enrollments carry a composite unique on (courseId, studentId) — re-enrolling the same student in the same course is a constraint violation, not a duplicate row.
lessonProgress uses text + CHECK over pgEnum for status, keeping 'not_started'/'in_progress'/'completed' extensible without an ALTER TYPE migration.
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.