ADR-001: Tech Stack — TypeScript, Express, Prisma, PostgreSQL

Status: Accepted
Date: 2026-04-17

Context

RealWorld spec requires a complete REST API. Needed a stack with strong typing, mature ORM, and Railway compatibility.

Decision

TypeScript + Express 4 + Prisma 5 + PostgreSQL.

Alternatives Considered

• Fastify: faster but less ecosystem maturity for this domain
• Mongoose/MongoDB: RealWorld spec has relational data (follows, favorites, tags) — relational DB is a better fit
• Drizzle ORM: less mature migration tooling than Prisma at time of writing

Consequences

• Prisma requires binaryTargets = ["native", "linux-musl-openssl-3.0.x"] for Alpine Docker images
• prisma migrate deploy runs on container start — zero-downtime deploys require backward-compatible migrations
• Strong typing propagates from Prisma schema through repositories to API response types