O-BERNARDOFOEGBU/vaultcircle

VaultCircle is a community savings platform where users can form savings circles, invite members, and track collective financial goals. The concept is rooted in the traditional African "ajo" or "esusu" savings culture — digitised and made accessible via a clean, mobile-first web application. # VaultCircle > A fintech-inspired savings circle platform — I built as a fullstack engineering submission for Abbey Mortgage Bank. **Live Demo:** vaultcircle-tau.vercel.app **Backend API:** vaultcircle-backend.onrende… **GitHub:** github.com --- ## What is VaultCircle? VaultCircle is a community savings platform where users can form savings circles, invite members, and track collective financial goals. The concept is rooted in the traditional African "ajo" or "esusu" savings culture — digitised and made accessible via a clean, mobile-first web application. The app was built to satisfy three core requirements: - **Authentication** — Secure register, login, logout and session management via HTTP-only cookies - **Accounts** — User profiles with bio, occupation and savings goal stored per user - **Relationships** — Circles as the relationship layer: users can create circles, join circles, and view members --- ## Tech Stack | Layer | Technology | Reason | |---|---|---| | Frontend | Next.js 15 (App Router) + TypeScript | React-based, file-system routing, SSR-ready | | Styling | TailwindCSS | Utility-first, fast iteration, consistent design | | State | Zustand | Lightweight global auth state without boilerplate | | Data Fetching | TanStack React Query | Caching, loading states, refetch on focus | | Backend | Node.js + Express + TypeScript | Familiar, minimal, easy to reason about | | ORM | Prisma v6 | Type-safe queries, clean migrations, great DX | | Database | PostgreSQL (Supabase) | Relational, reliable, free hosted tier | | Auth | JWT in HTTP-only cookies | Secure, no localStorage exposure, works cross-origin | | Validation | Zod | Runtime schema validation on both routes and forms | | PWA | next-pwa + manifest.json | Mobile-app feel without a native codebase | | Hosting | Vercel (frontend) + Render (backend) | Free tier, git-connected, auto-deploy on push | --- ## Architecture Overview ``` va …