workbench

Those are the standard Devpost story section headers — let's fill them in based on everything we actually built and the real journey you had (including the AWS hurdles, which are genuinely worth mentioning honestly).

Inspiration Hobbyists in woodworking, knitting, 3D printing, and similar crafts often lose track of what their projects actually cost. Receipts pile up, materials get bought in batches across multiple projects, and there's no easy way to see total spend per project. We wanted a lightweight tool built specifically for that — not a generic spreadsheet.

What it does Workbench lets makers create an account, log projects, and track materials with quantity and cost. It automatically calculates running totals per project and across a user's entire workbench, using a relational data model: one user has many projects, and each project has many materials.

How we built it The frontend is built with Next.js (App Router) and Tailwind CSS, deployed on Vercel. Auth uses bcrypt-hashed passwords with JWT session cookies. The backend uses Aurora PostgreSQL, connected through Next.js API routes via a pooled pg connection. A SQL view (project_costs) joins projects to materials and aggregates SUM(quantity * unit_cost) to power the dashboard totals — a natural fit for Aurora's relational model.

Challenges we ran into The biggest challenge wasn't code — it was infrastructure access. Getting AWS account access working in time was a real struggle: a suspended personal AWS account, no card or UPI available for new account verification, and navigating the Vercel-AWS marketplace integration to find a workaround. We deployed the full application successfully on Vercel and built out the complete schema and queries for Aurora PostgreSQL, while working through final database provisioning. Accomplishments that we're proud of A complete, working full-stack app — auth, relational schema, live cost calculations, and a distinct visual identity — built and deployed end to end on Next.js and Vercel, with a production-ready Aurora PostgreSQL schema designed and tested.

What we learned How to design a relational schema around real aggregate queries (SUM across joined tables) rather than just CRUD, and how Vercel's storage marketplace integrates directly with AWS database services like

Aurora. What's next for Workbench Finishing the live Aurora PostgreSQL connection, adding photo uploads for finished projects, and letting makers mark a project as "for sale" with the calculated cost as a pricing baseline.

Built With

• aws-aurora
• bcrypt
• nextjs
• node.js
• postgresql
• react
• tailwindcss
• typescript
• vercel