Super Impress

Super Impress is a Frontend Hire initiative where we build a serious product in public as a community.

Quick Intro

This is why I am (or hopefully, we are) building SuperImpress.

There are many LinkedIn tools out there but:

• They make excessive use of AI to create content.
• This automatically results in not-so-authentic content.
• In order to sell themselves, they are marketing writing on LinkedIn in a wrong way.

SuperImpress will:

• Be author first and AI second.
• You write, then if needed you use AI to fix the writing.
• Give you templates that are plagiarism safe.
• And more, as I myself use the product.

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Do note that I have already built the v0 (I have taken it down) of the product and it has served me and a few other users well.

For v1, I want to re-build it both from a product and a tech perspective.

We will be documenting every decision while re-building the product and this would be stored in the decisions folder.

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Join the discord community for the latest updates.

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Getting Started

Pre-commit Setup

This project uses pre-commit hooks to ensure code quality and consistency.

Steps to setup pre-commit:

# Install pre-commit
pip install pre-commit

# or if you have uv installed
uv tool install pre-commit

# Install the git hooks
pre-commit install

Now pre-commit hooks will automatically run on staged files before each commit. If a hook fails, the commit will be blocked until issues are resolved.

Manual execution (optional):

# Run on staged files
pre-commit run

# Run on all files
pre-commit run --all-files

Database Setup

Super Impress uses PostgreSQL as its database. The database choice is documented in decisions/tech/5-postgresql.md.

The application connects via DATABASE_URL and works with any PostgreSQL instance - Docker (recommended for development), local installation, or cloud services like AWS RDS.

Development Modes

You can run the project in two modes:

Mode 1: Local Backend + Docker PostgreSQL (Recommended)

Best for active development with fast backend restarts and debugging.

1. Configure backend environment: Create backend/.env:

   # Backend runs locally, PostgreSQL in Docker
   DATABASE_URL=postgresql+psycopg://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/super_impress

2. Start PostgreSQL:

   docker compose up postgres -d

3. Install dependencies:

   cd backend
   uv sync

4. Run database migrations:

   uv run alembic upgrade head

5. Start backend locally:

   uv run fastapi dev

6. Test the setup:

   • Backend: http://localhost:8000/docs
   • PostgreSQL: Available on localhost:5432

Mode 2: Full Docker (Backend + PostgreSQL)

Run everything in Docker with a single command.

1. Configure backend environment: Create backend/.env:

   # Both backend and PostgreSQL in Docker
   DATABASE_URL=postgresql+psycopg://postgres:postgres@postgres:5432/super_impress

2. Start all services:

   docker compose up backend -d

3. Run database migrations:

   docker compose exec backend uv run alembic upgrade head

Key Difference: The hostname in DATABASE_URL:

• localhost - Backend runs on your machine (Mode 1)
• postgres - Backend runs in Docker (Mode 2)

Database Migrations

We use Alembic for database schema migrations.

Creating a new migration

After modifying models in backend/app/*/models.py:

# Mode 1 (Local backend)
cd backend
uv run alembic revision --autogenerate -m "describe your changes"

# Mode 2 (Docker backend)
docker compose exec backend uv run alembic revision --autogenerate -m "describe your changes"

Review the generated migration file in backend/alembic/versions/ before applying.

Applying migrations

# Mode 1 (Local backend)
uv run alembic upgrade head

# Mode 2 (Docker backend)
docker compose exec backend uv run alembic upgrade head

Reverting migrations

# Rollback one migration
uv run alembic downgrade -1

# Rollback to specific revision
uv run alembic downgrade <revision_id>

# Rollback all migrations
uv run alembic downgrade base

Viewing migration history

# Show current revision
uv run alembic current

# Show migration history
uv run alembic history

# Show pending migrations
uv run alembic heads