Unfinal

Anti-draft public live-writing tool for fighting perfectionism: if text exists, it is already out there.

Each URL is a live document. Visitors can read in real time; configured authenticated writers can edit. All accepted changes are public immediately.

Built right now

• Elixir/Phoenix LiveView + Phoenix PubSub for live updates.
• Clerk OAuth/OIDC login + writer allowlist from config/local/writers.txt.
• One live document per path (/, /notes, /foo/bar, etc.).
• Documents persist in SQLite (source of truth); Litestream provides async backup to S3/R2.
• .env auto-load for local env vars.

Run

mix deps.get
cp .env.example .env
mix phx.server

Open http://localhost:4000/.

Persistence

Documents are stored in a local SQLite database (source of truth). Litestream runs as a sidecar to provide continuous async backup to an S3-compatible replica (e.g. Cloudflare R2).

Required env vars:

UNFINAL_STORAGE_MODE=sqlite
UNFINAL_DATABASE_PATH=./.data/unfinal.sqlite3
UNFINAL_DATA_DIR=.data

Litestream reads S3 replica credentials from the environment for backup/restore only.

Legacy R2 archive

The original R2 object-store data remains as a read-only archive. The normal web app does not read from or write to R2. R2 archive access is available only through explicit operator tasks:

# Backfill from archived R2 indexes into SQLite (must pass the explicit flag)
mix unfinal.migrate_r2_to_sqlite --allow-r2-archive-read

To enable R2 archive reads for admin tasks, set UNFINAL_ALLOW_R2_ARCHIVE_READ=true in the environment.

Rollback

Rollback target is the Phase 5 app version with SQLite still primary. Do not switch back to R2-primary without accepting data loss or running a separate SQLite-to-R2 export first — R2 no longer contains writes made after the Phase 6 cutover.

Clerk OAuth/OIDC

Production uses server-side Clerk OAuth/OIDC authorization-code flow. No ClerkJS/React/app auth JavaScript.

Set env vars:

CLERK_FRONTEND_API_URL=https://<your-clerk-frontend-api>.clerk.accounts.dev
CLERK_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID=...
CLERK_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET=...
CLERK_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI=https://your-domain.example/auth/clerk/callback
CLERK_OAUTH_SCOPES="email profile"

In Clerk Dashboard → OAuth applications, create app with redirect URI matching CLERK_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI. Scopes should include openid email profile; app adds openid automatically.

Local writers

mkdir -p config/local
echo you@example.com > config/local/writers.txt

One email per line. config/local/ is git-ignored.

Deploy on exe.dev VM

From the repo directory on the VM:

./deploy-exe-dev.sh