Social network 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).
Social network — public profiles with @-handles, a directed follow graph, an authored-post feed, and per-post like edges.
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
Social network schema: profiles, follow graph, posts & likes
Profiles & handlesone public profile per Better Auth user, with a unique @-handle and optional bio/avatar
Follows: the directed user graphdirected follower→following edges with a composite unique that prevents duplicate follows
Posts & the feedauthored feed posts keyed to a Better Auth user, indexed per-author for profile timeline queries
Post likespost↔user like edges with a composite unique enforcing one like per user per post
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.
Both the follow edge (follower_id + following_id composite PK + unique) and the like edge (post_id + user_id composite PK + unique) carry explicit unique constraints — the constraint is the identity, not just a performance index.
Better Auth's user.id is text, not uuid; all four tables match that type on their FK columns rather than recasting, so joins never cross a type boundary.