Relay CRM

Modern CRM with sequence automation, visual workflow builder, and a design system grounded in cognitive science research.

The interesting part of a CRM is the automation engine, and getting it right means treating time and delivery as first-class problems. Relay runs sequences and workflows on a real BullMQ job queue backed by Redis, so a delay actually delays and an email actually fires when it should instead of blocking a request. The worker package leans on a few ideas worth calling out: at-least-once delivery with idempotent consumers (deterministic job IDs so a retried trigger can't double-schedule), delayed jobs for step timing, bounded retries with exponential backoff for transient failures like a flaky SMTP host, and backpressure through a fixed worker concurrency. Everything crossing a boundary is validated with Zod, and job routing goes through a small handler registry rather than a switch chain.

• packages/db — Prisma schema for contacts, companies, deals, sequences, and workflows, with a seeded local database.
• packages/shared — Zod schemas, workflow graph validation (cycle detection, topological sort, reachability), and sequence analytics.
• packages/web — Next.js app: CRM views, sequence editor, and a React Flow workflow builder.
• packages/worker — BullMQ queue on the declared Redis with two job types, sequence-step and workflow-delay, deterministic job IDs for idempotent scheduling, clamped delays, and a Zod-validated dispatcher.

• Framework: Next.js 15+ (App Router, React 19)
• Language: TypeScript 5 (strict)
• Database: PostgreSQL 16 via Prisma 6
• Styling: Tailwind CSS 3.x + Radix UI
• Workflow Canvas: React Flow
• Validation: Zod everywhere
• Testing: Vitest (unit/integration) + Playwright (E2E)
• Package Manager: pnpm 9

relay/
├── packages/
│ ├── web/ # Next.js frontend
│ ├── shared/ # Zod schemas, types, constants
│ ├── worker/ # BullMQ queue + background job processing
│ └── db/ # Prisma schema, client, migrations
├── docker-compose.yml
├── turbo.json
└── pnpm-workspace.yaml

• Node.js 20+
• pnpm 9+
• Docker (for local Postgres + Redis)

# Install dependencies
pnpm install
# Start local services
docker compose up -d
# Generate Prisma client
pnpm db:generate
# Run migrations
pnpm db:migrate
# Seed the database
pnpm db:seed
# Start dev server
pnpm dev

# Unit tests
pnpm test
# Integration tests (requires running Postgres)
pnpm test:integration
# E2E tests (starts dev server automatically)
pnpm test:e2e

The worker package schedules and runs sequence steps and workflow delays on Redis. Register a handler per job type, then start a worker.

import {
 createConnection,
 createQueue,
 createWorker,
 enqueueSequenceStep,
 JobDispatcher,
 JOB_NAMES,
} from "@relay/worker";
const connection = createConnection(); // reads REDIS_URL
const queue = createQueue(connection);
// Schedule the next step for an enrollment, 30 minutes out.
await enqueueSequenceStep(queue, { enrollmentId, sequenceId, stepId }, 30 * 60 * 1000);
const dispatcher = new JobDispatcher()
 .on(JOB_NAMES.sequenceStep, async (payload) => {
 /* send the email, advance the enrollment */
 })
 .on(JOB_NAMES.workflowDelay, async (payload) => {
 /* resume the workflow execution from the delay node */
 });
createWorker(dispatcher, { connection });

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in the values. See the file for required variables.