The Pragmatic Papers

The website for pragmaticpapers.com.

Read about our current initiatives on the wiki: Pragmatic Papers Developement Wiki

Requirements

docker
Node.js version 22+
pnpm

Utilities

This repo uses some additional tools:

• Turborepo for monorepo management
• TypeScript for static type checking
• ESLint for code linting
• Prettier for code formatting

Quick Start

Note

If you run into issues onboarding please open a pull request

1. Clone the repo and cd into it.
2. (Optional) Set up the private display font — see Private Font Setup below. Don't worry you can come back to this later.
3. Run pnpm install. The preinstall hook copies apps/pragmatic-papers/.env from .env.example if missing.
4. Start dev:

 pnpm dev

5. Open http://localhost:8000.

Private Font Setup

The @digitalgroundgame/fonts package contains the proprietary display font. It is optional — the site works without it, falling back to system fonts. If you don't have access, skip this section.

If you do have access, create a Classic GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT) at GitHub Settings → Tokens with the read:packages scope.

The project .npmrc references GH_FONT_READ — you just need that variable set before running pnpm install. Choose whichever method suits you:

• Mac/Linux — shell profile (applies to every terminal automatically):

  # ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc
  export GH_FONT_READ=ghp_your_token_here

• Windows (PowerShell) — set permanently for your user:

  [System.Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("GH_FONT_READ", "ghp_your_token_here", "User")

  Alternatively, open System Properties → Advanced → Environment Variables (search "environment variables" in the Start menu) and add GH_FONT_READ under "User variables".

Restart your terminal after setting the variable, then re-run pnpm install. You should see ✓ Fonts copied to public/fonts in the output.

Seeding the Database

In order to see some basic content and website functionality it is key to seed your development database with mock content.

1. Navigate to http://localhost:8000/admin
2. Create a new user. The credentials don't matter here as its local.
3. When you land on the dashboard click the Seed your database link.
4. Wait a few moments and now your website will have some example content when returning to browsing http://localhost:8000

Tip

If your docker database ever gets into a unrecoverable state, or you are switch branches that have different database schemas, be sure to run pnpm dev:db-nuke to blow away your database and start fresh.

Read more about Seeding The Database

Helpful Commands

Here are the most important scripts available in the root package.json:

• pnpm dev: Start the application in development mode.
• pnpm dev:db: Start the development docker container. This happens automatically when running pnpm dev.
• pnpm dev:db-down: Stop the development docker container.
• pnpm dev:db-nuke: Stop the container and remove the database volume.
• pnpm lint: Lint files with eslint.
• pnpm format: Format files with prettier.
• pnpm check-types: Runs typescript compiler in no emit mode to check for type errors.
• pnpm migrate:create "name_of_migration": Create the necessary migrations for your Pull Request, if the underlying data has changed. This is necessary in order to deploy your Pull Request on to our staging environment.

Note

Development Migrations

You do not need to run migrations against your development database, because Drizzle will have already pushed any changes to the docker container for you.

Payload uses Drizzle ORM's powerful push mode to automatically sync data changes to your database for you while in development mode. By default, this is enabled and is the suggested workflow to using Postgres and Payload while doing local development.

Production Migrations

Migrations will be required for non-development database environments.

• Please refer to the offical Payload Migration Documentation

Useful Links

• Payload Documentation
• Payload Migration Documentation