Onboarding — designer-api

The internal designer backend. Express + MySQL. ~269 endpoints, ~57 background jobs, plus standalone AI "bots" (FAQs, quizzes, quotes, trends, content generation). Pairs with Someli-Designer (the Nuxt 2 + Polotno designer FE used by Someli's content-ops staff).

This repo is a fork of the someli-api skeleton, drifted independently. Same Express + server.js + routes/routes.js + actions/ + helper/ + modules/dbDriver/ shape — but the helper folder is much thinner (only helper/index.js) and there are no Passport / webhooks / dashboard.

First: make sure you've worked through the cross-cutting docs.

Read in order

1. 01-setup.md — clone, install, env vars, start
2. 02-stack.md — Express + MySQL, AI providers, bots vs jobs
3. 03-architecture.md — folder map, entry point, the 30+ industry-clone jobs, request lifecycle
4. 04-getting-started.md — first contribution
5. 05-where-to-look.md — symptom → location

Related reference docs

• ../../audit/designer-api/ — full audit subtree
• ../../code-inspect/designer-api.md — code-level findings