Fitness tracker on React Router v8, Postgres (Neon) and Better Auth
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
React Router v8 (framework mode) — SSR, config/file routes under app/, loaders/actions, and resource routes for API endpoints.
Postgres on Neon via Drizzle ORM and the postgres-js driver.
Better Auth — self-hosted auth running inside your app against your Postgres (Drizzle adapter).
Fitness tracker — user-owned workout plans, a shared exercise catalog, append-only workout logs, and per-set reps/weight rows.
Setup
bun add react-router react react-dom drizzle-orm postgres better-authDATABASE_URLNeon pooled (-pooler) connection stringBETTER_AUTH_SECRETgenerate with `openssl rand -base64 32`BETTER_AUTH_URLyour app's base URLApply the schema with bunx drizzle-kit push
Initialization
Database client
Fitness tracker schema: plans, exercises, logs & sets
Workout plansuser-owned training plans that group and label a series of workout sessions
Exercise catalogshared, user-agnostic library of exercises keyed by unique name and optional muscle group
Workout logs & setsappend-only workout log rows with child log_sets recording per-set reps and weight
Deploy targets
Decisions and compatibility
Framework mode (not data/library mode): routes live under app/, declared in app/routes.ts. API endpoints are resource routes (a route module exporting loader/action but no default component).
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.
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.
exercises.name carries a unique constraint — the exercise catalog is shared across all users, so duplicate names are a schema error, not a soft collision.
workout_logs.plan_id is set null on plan deletion, not cascaded — historical logs are preserved even when the originating plan is removed.