day3

Marketing and transactional email, billed by sends. $1/mo. No contact tax, no marketing suite to learn.

day3.app

Source-available, not open source. This code is published for transparency and reference. See LICENSE for terms.

This repository is the Day3 product itself: the app at go.day3.app, the public REST API, the webhook and MCP endpoints, and the worker that sends the mail.

What it does

Day3 is a deliberately small email tool for small SaaS teams. Send product updates and changelogs to your users, and send your app's transactional email (password resets, receipts, magic links), through one verified domain, one monthly allowance, and one place to see delivery.

• Campaigns with a block composer, optional AI assist, scheduling, and per-send stats
• Audiences with segments (saved filters), topics (subscription categories), CSV import, and hosted signup forms
• Transactional email over POST /v1/emails, Resend-compatible in shape, with per-email delivery status
• Automations: onboarding and lifecycle flows drawn on a node canvas, published as immutable versions, unlimited on every tier
• Deliverability by default: verified sending domains, double opt-in, one-click unsubscribe, automatic bounce and complaint suppression, account auto-pause on bad reputation
• Metrics for deliverability, reputation and engagement, plus a searchable log of every email you ever sent
• Public API v1, signed webhooks, and an MCP server so Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code can draft a campaign that lands in Day3 as editable blocks
• Billed on sends, not subscribers. Free accounts set up domains, build audiences and send for real in sandbox mode. Paid plans buy the allowance to reach everyone else.

PRODUCT.md is the canonical description of what Day3 is, what it costs, and how every feature behaves. Read it before the code.

Tech stack

Quick Links

Built by Pradsgaard Labs. Also from the same workshop: exit1.dev, uptime monitoring.

Local development

npm install

# Env: web tier + worker (see "Required environment variables" below)
cp .env.example .env.local
cp .env.worker.example .env.worker

# Database
npm run db:migrate     # forward-only, applies un-applied journal entries
npm run db:seed        # optional sample data

npm run dev            # Next.js on http://localhost:3000
npm run worker         # BullMQ worker, in a second terminal

Sign in with Clerk and create an organization, and you have a tenant. The campaign pipeline (review, generate recipients, batched queue sends, stats) works end to end locally.

Useful:

• npm test: vitest against real Postgres (pglite). Applies migrations from scratch every run and asserts schema, journal and snapshots agree. Idempotency tests live here too.
• npm run typecheck / npm run lint / npm run build
• npm run db:generate: new Drizzle migration after schema changes
• npm run db:studio: browse the local database

Migration discipline

src/db/schema.ts is the single source of truth. SQL under migrations/ is forward-only and generated, never edited by hand. The journal (migrations/meta/_journal.json) and the per-migration *_snapshot.json files are part of the migration, so always commit them together.

Workflow when you change the schema:

1. Edit src/db/schema.ts.
2. npm run db:generate writes the next NNNN_*.sql, its snapshot, and the journal entry.
3. Review the SQL (squash or rename within the same PR if the diff is noisy), then commit the SQL and the meta/ changes in one commit.
4. npm test proves it applies cleanly from scratch.

CI enforces this: it re-runs drizzle-kit generate and fails the build if that produces any diff, meaning schema.ts and the committed migrations disagree or a migration was added without its snapshot. Two contributors who both generate a migration will collide on the next NNNN index. Resolve it by regenerating one off the merged schema.ts so the journal stays linear.

Apply order in production is drizzle-kit migrate (see the deploy checklist), which replays only the un-applied journal entries against DATABASE_URL and records them in the __drizzle_migrations table. Never db:push, which diffs live and can drop columns.

Required environment variables

Both processes validate their environment at startup (src/lib/env.ts) and refuse to boot if a required variable is missing or a secret is too short (min 16 chars). This prevents the empty-key failure mode where an unset UNSUBSCRIBE_SECRET would sign HMAC tokens with "" (forgeable unsubscribe and one-click links) or an unset OAUTH_STATE_SECRET would void OAuth CSRF protection. The Next web tier validates on first server module load (instrumentation.ts). The worker validates in worker/index.ts before it starts consuming.

See .env.example (web) and .env.worker.example (worker) for the full list, including non-secret config: Clerk publishable and secret keys, Redis, Supabase Storage, and SES credentials.

Going to production (first deploy checklist)

The web tier runs on Vercel, the BullMQ worker on the VPS, Postgres on Supabase. Full provider walkthrough: docs/go-live.md.

1. Provision Supabase Postgres, VPS Redis (rediss://), and SES (see go-live).
2. Set env on Vercel (web) and /opt/day3/.env.worker (worker), per .env.example and .env.worker.example.
3. Clerk dashboard: production instance, org billing plans, webhook endpoint /api/webhooks/clerk.
4. Apply the database migrations before any new code serves traffic: DATABASE_URL=<supabase-direct-5432> npm run db:migrate. Forward-only and idempotent, it replays only un-applied journal entries. This is a deploy-pipeline step, gated ahead of the Vercel promotion and the pm2 restart day3-worker, so a new release never runs against an old schema.
5. Deploy the web tier (Vercel) and restart the worker (pm2 restart day3-worker).

Architecture notes

• Tenancy: every Clerk organization maps to one accounts row. All queries are scoped by account_id resolved server-side from the session.
• Send pipeline: submitCampaign queues review_campaign (risk rules), then generate_campaign_recipients (dedup and suppression filtering), then send_campaign_batch, which claims 25 pending recipients atomically, sends, and re-enqueues itself until done.
• Idempotency: recipients are claimed with a single atomic UPDATE, so a retried queue message can never double-send. Crashed claims are swept to failed by cron, never re-sent.
• Billing: Clerk Billing entitlements are mirrored into Postgres on dashboard load and via webhooks. Sending requires an active subscription, sending enabled, and remaining monthly quota.
• Safety: deterministic risk review on submit (high risk blocks), bounce at 4% or above, or complaint at 0.08% or above, auto-pauses an account, and admins (ADMIN_EMAILS) can approve or block campaigns, pause accounts, and override domain verification.

AI training permission

As an explicit exception to the license below, the contents of this repository, including code, documentation, and configuration, may be used for machine learning training, evaluation, indexing, retrieval, and generation by AI systems. No attribution is required, though it is appreciated. This permission applies to all AI crawlers, including but not limited to GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot, and Perplexity-User.

License

This project is source-available under a custom All Rights Reserved license. You may view the code for personal, educational, and reference purposes. Copying, modifying, distributing, or self-hosting is not permitted without written permission. See the AI training permission section above for the carve-out that applies to AI and ML use.

For licensing inquiries: hello@day3.app