Circle

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Build me a community platform that replaces Circle — and read this before deciding, because the honest obstacle is not technical.

**Members do not migrate.** A community is the one asset in this catalogue that genuinely cannot be exported: you can move the posts, but you cannot move the habit of a thousand people opening a particular application. Expect to lose a large share of an existing community in a move, and plan the migration as a campaign rather than a data import. If the community is thriving, the safe answer is to stay. If you are starting one, build.

STACK
- Node 20+ with Fastify, server-rendered HTML with a little vanilla JS
- SQLite through better-sqlite3, WAL mode, with FTS5
- Caddy in front

THE DATA MODEL
- spaces: id, group_id, name, slug, kind, visibility, post_permission, position — discussion, course, events, or chat
- posts: id, space_id, author_id, title, body_md, body_html, is_pinned, comment_count, reaction_count, created_at
- comments, reactions, mentions, subscriptions
- members: id, user_id, joined_at, role, tier_id, last_seen_at, post_count, trust_level
- tiers: id, name, monthly_cents, currency, space_ids_json, is_active; subscriptions with the provider's reference
- courses, lessons, progress — a course is a space whose posts are ordered lessons with completion tracked
- events: id, space_id, title, starts_at_utc, timezone, location_kind, join_url, capacity; rsvps
- notifications and digests, per member

MEMBERSHIP AND MONEY
- Hosted checkout from one payment provider; no card data here
- Access derived from an active subscription, never a stored flag, checked on the server for every space and every post
- The provider's own portal for cards and cancellations
- Webhooks with signature verification and idempotency by event id; reconcile nightly against the provider
- A member's own page showing what they pay for and how to leave, in two clicks

GETTING PEOPLE BACK, WHICH IS THE WHOLE PROBLEM
- A community without notifications is a community nobody returns to. That is the actual product, not the forum
- Email digests: a daily or weekly summary of what happened in the spaces a member follows, with the frequency they choose, and it stops when it stops being opened
- Mentions and replies immediately; everything else batched
- Push notifications need a registered mobile application, which is the honest gap. A PWA gets you push on some platforms and not others — check for yours before promising it, and say so in the README
- Unread state per member per space, correct, because a community that shows everything as unread is one people stop opening

DISCUSSION THAT STAYS READABLE
- Posts with threaded comments to a shallow depth, reactions, and pinning
- Trust levels earned by reading and participating, unlocking abilities and distributing moderation. Build the counters from day one; they cannot be reconstructed
- Moderation: a queue, reports with reasons, block, mute, and every action logged and reversible
- Spam defences: a honeypot, rate limits per address hash, and a review queue for a new member's first post

EVENTS AND LIVE
- Events with a time zone, an ICS download and reminders
- Live streaming is not something to build. Use an existing meeting or streaming service and embed it, with the recording posted afterwards

SEARCH AND ESCAPE
- FTS5 across posts and comments, respecting permissions inside the query
- Export everything — members, posts, comments, subscriptions — in one command. Say so publicly; a community that can leave is one that trusts you

OPERATIONS
- .env: DATABASE_PATH, STORAGE_PATH, BASE_URL, SESSION_SECRET, SMTP_URL, PROVIDER_KEY, PROVIDER_WEBHOOK_SECRET, HASH_SALT
- Migrations on boot, each once; nightly backup off the machine, restore script
- Health endpoint

WHAT MATTERS MOST
Digests and unread state. Build those before the interface is pretty, because everything else here is a forum and those two are why anybody comes back.