Protein Deficients Anonymous (PDA)

A vegan collective liberation community platform.

Stack

• Backend: Django 5.2 + Django Ninja (API) + PostgreSQL
• Frontend: Vite + React + TypeScript
• Deployment: Railway
• Auth: JWT (admin-only user creation)

Quick Start

cp .env.example .env
make install
make db-start
make migrate
make createsuperuser
make dev  # runs Django :8000 + Vite :3000

See docs/local-environment-setup.md for prerequisites and first-time setup details.

Features

• Public landing page with group info and values
• Join request form (submitted requests emailed to vetting group)
• Members-only calendar (JWT auth, admin-created accounts only)
• Django admin for managing users, join requests, and events

Commands

See CLAUDE.md for full command reference.

Environments

Environment	URL	Branch	Deploys
Staging	staging-pda.up.railway.app	main	On push to main (auto)
Production	proteindeficientsanonymous.com	main	Manual via GitHub Actions

Staging is the preview environment — merging to main auto-deploys staging. Verify there, then manually promote to production via the deploy railway (production) workflow in GitHub Actions.

Manual Railway deploys via GitHub Actions (workflow_dispatch) are documented in CLAUDE.md (environment section).

Contributing

1. Branch off main: git checkout main && git pull && git checkout -b your-feature
2. Open a pull request targeting main
3. Verify on staging-pda.up.railway.app after merge
4. When ready, run the deploy railway (production) GitHub Action to promote to production

Direct pushes to main are not allowed for contributors.

releases

versioning and the changelog are automated with semantic-release. every push to main runs .github/workflows/release.yml, which computes the next semver version from conventional commits, updates CHANGELOG.md, bumps the version in frontend/package.json and pyproject.toml, tags the release, and publishes a github release.

one-time setup (owner):

1. create a RELEASE_TOKEN repo actions secret — a fine-grained PAT or github app token with contents: write on this repo, on an identity allowed to bypass main branch protection.
2. add that identity to the branch-protection bypass allowlist (main requires a PR + approval; enforce_admins is off).
3. push a seed tag on main before the first release: git tag v0.1.0 && git push origin v0.1.0 (prevents the first changelog from spanning the entire history).

commits follow conventional commits: feat → minor, fix/perf → patch, BREAKING CHANGE → major; chore/docs/test/refactor → no release.

the [skip ci] release commit skips the release workflow (loop prevention) but still lands on main, so railway's staging auto-deploy will redeploy once per release — expected and harmless, since only the version files and changelog change.