Helpdesk / support on React Router v8, 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
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.
Clerk — hosted identity (sign-in UI, sessions, user management) mounted via middleware + provider.
Customer support desk — tickets with status/priority queues, threaded messages with internal notes, agent profiles, and seed-managed SLA policies.
Setup
bun add react-router react react-dom 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
Helpdesk schema: tickets, messages, agents & SLA policies
Tickets & status/priority queuethe core support request with open/pending/solved/closed status and low/normal/high/urgent priority, indexed for queue views
Ticket messages & internal notesappend-only thread rows on each ticket; is_internal hides agent-only notes from the requester
Agents & team assignmentone agent profile per Better Auth user (unique on user_id), with an optional team field for queue segmentation
SLA policies per priorityseed-managed response and resolution targets in integer minutes, keyed by priority tier
Verified identity sync (Clerk)
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.
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`.
Status and priority are text + CHECK (not pgEnum), so adding a new value (e.g. 'escalated') ships without an ALTER TYPE migration — consistent with the house style in packages/db/src/schema.ts.
agents carries a unique constraint on user_id (one profile per user) and sla_policies carries no unique on priority, allowing multiple named policies at the same priority tier for different customer tiers.
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.