Architecture and feature documentation from production work on CartAlchemy — a B2B/B2C e-commerce platform built on Node.js, Express, Vue.js, MongoDB, and Handlebars.
CartAlchemy V1 · Node.js · Express · MongoDB · S3 · CKEditor 5 · Sharp
Inherited a largely non-functional blog module and led a full overhaul to production-ready. Built a dual-mode content authoring system (WYSIWYG and page builder), an image processing pipeline (Sharp → WebP → S3), scheduled publishing, draft preview, and a custom SEO and readability engine with 21 checks including Flesch-Kincaid scoring.
CartAlchemy V1 · Node.js · IBM i (AS400) · DB2/400 · JT400 · MongoDB
End-to-end delivery of a recurring orders feature for a B2B education sector platform. The standout technical challenge: all schedule data lives in IBM i (AS400) DB2/400 tables. CartAlchemy communicates with IBM i exclusively through a custom JT400 Java bridge, calling stored procedures and executing SQL directly against DB2/400. MongoDB's role is narrow — mirroring a subset of held order data via a cron sync job to support UI display.