Marketplace 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.
Two-sided marketplace — seller profiles, a listings catalog, buyer orders with price capture, periodic seller payouts, and per-listing reviews.
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
Two-sided marketplace schema: sellers, listings, orders, payouts & reviews
Sellers & payout onboardingone seller profile per Better Auth user, holding payout-provider account id and an approval status (pending/active/suspended)
Listings catalog & pricingseller-owned items with integer priceCents and a draft/active/sold/archived lifecycle
Marketplace orders & buyersbuyer-to-listing purchase records with amount captured at creation and a 6-state fulfillment status
Seller payouts & settlement periodsnet-amount remittance rows keyed by seller + text period, one per settlement window with a 4-state processing status
Listing reviews & ratingsone review per reviewer per listing (unique constraint), with a CHECK enforcing rating between 1 and 5
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`.
Order amountCents is captured at purchase time independently of the listing's priceCents — editing a listing price later cannot corrupt historical order records.
Payouts enforce a unique constraint on (sellerId, period), so each seller gets exactly one settlement row per billing window; duplicate payout jobs are rejected at the DB level.
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.