From Idea to Deployed: My Full-Stack Project Checklist

Why a Checklist?

Every experienced developer has been burned by the same categories of problems: no error monitoring until production crashes, no backups until data is lost, no rate limiting until someone hammers the API. A checklist externalizes that experience so you don't rely on memory.

This is mine — adapted over several real projects.

Phase 1: Project Setup

Repository

• Initialize Git, set up .gitignore (use gitignore.io for your stack)
• Add a README.md with: what the project is, how to run it locally, environment variables needed
• Protect the main branch — require PRs, disable direct push
• Set up Conventional Commits + Husky pre-commit hooks

Environment

• Create .env.example with all required keys (no values) — commit this
• Add .env.local to .gitignore — never commit this
• Document each env variable: what it is, where to get it

Code Quality

• ESLint with project-appropriate rules
• Prettier with a .prettierrc so formatting is never a discussion
• TypeScript strict mode ("strict": true in tsconfig)
• Path aliases (@/) configured in tsconfig and Next.js config

Phase 2: Architecture Decisions

Document these early. Changing them later is expensive.

Data layer

• Which database? (Relational vs document — see my post on MongoDB vs SQL)
• ORM or query builder? (Prisma, Drizzle, Mongoose, raw SQL)
• Where does data fetching live? (Server Components, API routes, separate backend)

Auth strategy

• No auth, or auth? (Don't add it if you don't need it yet)
• Sessions (NextAuth) or JWTs?
• Which OAuth providers?
• Do you need role-based access control?

State management

• Server state: React Query / SWR / native fetch in Server Components
• Client state: useState / useReducer / Zustand — pick based on complexity, not habit

File storage

• Where do user-uploaded files go? (Cloudflare R2, AWS S3, Vercel Blob)
• What's the max file size? What types are allowed?

Phase 3: Core Infrastructure

Error handling

• Global error boundary in the React tree
• Centralized API error handler (see my REST API post)
• Error monitoring service connected (Sentry is my default — free tier is generous)
• All async functions have try/catch or .catch()

Logging

• Structured logging in production (JSON format, not console.log)
• Log levels: debug for development, info/warn/error for production
• Request logging middleware (morgan or a custom solution)
• Never log sensitive data (passwords, tokens, PII)

Security

• helmet() middleware on all API routes
• CORS configured with an explicit allowlist, not *
• Rate limiting on auth endpoints (at minimum)
• Input validation on every API endpoint (Zod)
• Parameterized queries — no string concatenation with user input
• Dependencies audited: pnpm audit

Performance

• Images served through next/image or a CDN
• Database queries have indexes on frequently-filtered columns
• Heavy routes are code-split (next/dynamic)
• API responses include appropriate cache headers

Phase 4: SEO and Metadata

• <title> and <meta name="description"> on every page
• Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image) for social sharing
• robots.txt — allow or block crawlers as needed
• sitemap.xml — auto-generated from your routes
• Canonical URLs to prevent duplicate content penalties
• Structured data (JSON-LD) for entities that benefit from rich snippets (articles, products, local business)

Phase 5: Before Going Live

Testing

• Critical user paths manually tested: sign up, sign in, core feature, sign out
• Test on mobile (actually on a device, not just browser resize)
• Test with slow network (Chrome DevTools → Network → "Slow 3G")
• Test with JavaScript disabled (if SEO matters)

Infrastructure

• Environment variables set on the hosting platform — not hardcoded
• Database backups scheduled and tested (restore once, not just export)
• Deployment process documented: how do you release a new version?
• Domain, SSL certificate, DNS records verified

Monitoring

• Uptime monitoring (Better Uptime, UptimeRobot — both have free tiers)
• Error monitoring alerting to email or Slack
• Core Web Vitals baseline measured (Google PageSpeed Insights)

Phase 6: After Launch

The work doesn't stop at deployment.

• Set a calendar reminder to audit dependencies monthly
• Review error logs weekly for the first month
• Monitor server costs — serverless functions can surprise you
• Collect user feedback early, even informally

The Real Lesson

No project ships with this checklist 100% complete — and that's fine. The value is knowing which boxes you've consciously skipped and why. "We don't have rate limiting yet because we have zero users" is a valid decision. "We didn't know we needed rate limiting" is how you get into trouble.