Shutter

A daily photo journal for Hack Club intern cohorts (could potentially be repurposed for other cohorts). Each day has a prompt for at least one photo; members upload up to 5 photos per day and build streaks. Admins can set prompts and review submissions.

Built with SvelteKit, PostgreSQL (Drizzle ORM), and Hack Club OAuth.

For members

• Daily photo prompts, up to 5 uploads per day
• Streak tracking (3+ photos/day and the prompt met keeps your streak alive)
• Like other people's photos to promote the best ones to the top
• Streaks leaderboard
• Per-user notification preferences:
  • Daily reminder at a configurable hour
  • Web push notifications (when installed as a PWA)
  • Slack DM reminders
• Cohort gating: uploads + reminders are paused outside the configured COHORT_START / COHORT_END window

1. Install dependencies

npm install

2. Configure environment variables

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in the values:

Generate VAPID keys with npx web-push generate-vapid-keys.

3. Start the database

npm run db:start   # starts a local Postgres container via Docker Compose
npm run db:migrate # applies migrations

4. Run the dev server

npm run dev

npm run build       # production build
npm run preview     # preview production build
npm run check       # type checking
npm run db:studio   # Drizzle Studio (visual DB browser)
npm run db:generate # generate migrations from schema changes

Shutter is a regular SvelteKit app, so it runs on anything that can host one. You'll need:

• Postgres
• A Hack Club Auth app
• Hack Club CDN app — for image hosting (understand that this means your photos will be somewhat public?)
• A way to run a cron job — hooks.server.ts schedules an in-process hourly tick via croner, which hits /api/cron/reminders. If your host kills idle processes (most serverless platforms), point a real cron service (Vercel Cron, GitHub Actions on a schedule, etc.) at /api/cron/reminders with the CRON_SECRET bearer token instead.

Optionally:

• Slack workspace + bot token — only needed if you want DM reminders, the welcome DM on invite, or the admin "broadcast to non-push users" feature

To deploy: set the env vars from the table above, run node migrate.js once to apply migrations, then node build/index.js (or whatever your platform's start command is).

The "cohort" concept is generic - anyone with a defined start/end window can use this - think a Hack Club event, or a group trip, or even a class going through their school year together.

Configuring your cohort

• COHORT_START / COHORT_END controls when images can be submitted.
• The 3-photos-per-day streak threshold lives in src/lib/server/streak.ts.
• The 5-upload daily cap is in the upload route (src/routes/(app)/upload/+server.ts).

The app mentions "Hack Club" and "interns" by default - find instances and replace them as as needed.

Slack bot

The bot needs 5 scopes:

• chat:write - Send DM notifications and forward images to Slack if wanted
• users:read - Fetch user data for profile pictures and more
• chat:write.public - Forward images to public Slack channels the bot isn't in
• channels:read - Get channel info to confirm the bot can access it / post in it
• groups:read - Post in private channels the bot is invited to

Set up a Shutter bot (maybe themed around your specific cohort?) with these scopes, and you're golden!

PRs welcome!

This project used Claude Code for the implementation of various features, writing a good chunk of the code. Most technical workings were designed by me (including the login/auth system, the onboarding flow, integration with CDN and Slack, and more), but not manually implemented with hand-written code.

If you have any further questions about how to host your own instance of Shutter for a group or cohort, feel free to reach out to me on Slack @maxstellar or at my email!