Building to a 37k-word spec instead of a vibe

Chekka's whole pitch — "Before you buy, Chekka" — is that an independent professional inspects a used car so the buyer doesn't have to gamble. When the product is trust, you can't improvise the definition of "verified" halfway through the build.

Spec first

So Chekka started as a specification — a large one, around 37k words — that pins down the inspection flow, the report, and the booking lifecycle before the first route exists. The build follows the written contract rather than rediscovering scope in code review.

The stack is deliberately ordinary

It's a Next.js 16 monolith over Mongoose + Redis + S3, in TypeScript, tested with Playwright — a direct descendant of the Managerenta reference architecture. The boring stack is the point: nothing about the infrastructure should be surprising, because all the surprise budget belongs to the domain.

Where the weight actually sits

Three things carry the product: report integrity (the artifact a buyer pays to trust), media handling on S3 (the evidence behind the report), and a booking flow that schedules real humans to show up and inspect a real car. Everything else is plumbing in service of those three.