TaskStack

A modern, scalable task & workflow platform — TaskStack provides a full-featured backend and developer-friendly APIs to build collaborative task-driven applications. This README presents the depth of the project: architecture, key features, API patterns, deployment & testing guidance, and extension points.

Table of contents

• Why TaskStack?
• Core Features
• Architecture Overview
• Data Model (high level)
• Public API (summary)
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Quick start
  • Environment variables
  • Run tests
• Development & Contributing
• Testing & API Contract
• Deployment & Scaling
• Security & Best Practices
• Roadmap
• License
• Contact

Why TaskStack?

TaskStack is designed for product teams that need:

• A consistent API for tasks, subtasks, assignments, comments, labels and workflows.
• Auditability and history for critical task operations.
• Scalable architecture that supports millions of tasks and thousands of users.
• Pluggable integrations (webhooks, sync adapters, third-party auth).

Core Features

• Task lifecycle management (create, update, assign, progress, complete, archive).
• Subtasks and dependencies (blocking & blocked relationships).
• Labels, priorities, due dates, and flexible custom fields.
• Role-based access control and team membership.
• Audit trail, activity feed, and events for every meaningful change.
• Webhooks and background jobs for integrations.
• Search & filtering with paginated endpoints.
• Rate-limited, authenticated RESTful API with API keys / JWT.

Architecture Overview

• API Layer: RESTful JSON over HTTPS, pagination, consistent error format.
• Auth: JWT & OAuth2 support + API keys for service integrations.
• Services: Modular microservices / monolith with clear boundaries (Tasks, Users, Notifications, Search).
• Persistence: Primary relational store (Postgres) for transactional data + Redis for caching & locking.
• Async: Message queue (RabbitMQ / Kafka) for background processing and integration events.
• Indexing: ElasticSearch (or hosted equivalent) for fast full-text search.
• Observability: Structured logging, metrics (Prometheus), distributed tracing (Jaeger).

Simple ASCII diagram:

Client -> API Gateway -> Task Service -> Postgres
                       \-> Auth Service
                       \-> Worker (queue)
                       \-> Search Index

Data Model (high level)

• User { id, name, email, role, created_at }
• Team { id, name, members[] }
• Task { id, title, description, status, priority, assignees[], labels[], meta, created_at, updated_at }
• Subtask (Task referencing parent)
• Comment { id, author_id, task_id, body, created_at }
• AuditEvent { id, entity_type, entity_id, action, meta, user_id, timestamp }

Public API (summary)

All endpoints return JSON. Authentication: Bearer token (JWT) or API-Key header.

Common patterns:

• Standard HTTP status codes for success & errors.
• Pagination: ?page=1&per_page=25 (Link header included)
• Filtering: ?status=open&assigned=userid
• Sorting: ?sort=due_date:asc

Example endpoints (detailed specs and Postman collection will be added):

• POST /api/v1/auth/login -> returns { token }
• GET /api/v1/tasks -> list tasks
• POST /api/v1/tasks -> create task
• GET /api/v1/tasks/{id} -> get task
• PATCH /api/v1/tasks/{id} -> update task
• POST /api/v1/tasks/{id}/comments -> add comment
• POST /api/v1/tasks/{id}/subtasks -> create subtask
• POST /api/v1/webhooks -> register webhook

Example request

curl -X POST "https://api.taskstack.app/api/v1/tasks" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "title": "Design onboarding flow",
    "description": "Create wireframes & specs",
    "priority": "high",
    "assignees": ["user_123"],
    "labels": ["ux", "backend"],
    "due_date": "2025-12-01T12:00:00Z"
  }'

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node >= 18 / Python 3.10 / Go 1.20 (depending on chosen stack) — adjust to repo stack.
• PostgreSQL >= 13
• Redis
• Message broker (RabbitMQ / Kafka) for background jobs
• ElasticSearch (optional for search)

Quick start (example for a Node/Express setup)

# clone
git clone https://github.com/<owner>/TaskStack.git
cd TaskStack

# copy env
cp .env.example .env
# edit .env to point to your DB, Redis, and secret keys

# install
npm install

# run migrations
npm run migrate

# start dev server
npm run dev

Environment variables

• DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/taskstack
• REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379
• JWT_SECRET=super-secret-key
• PORT=4000
• ELASTICSEARCH_URL=http://localhost:9200

Run tests

# unit & integration tests
npm test

# run linters & type checks
npm run lint
npm run typecheck

Development & Contributing

We welcome contributions. Suggested workflow:

• Open an issue describing the enhancement / bug.
• Create a branch feature/ or fix/.
• Add tests for new behavior and ensure all tests pass.
• Open a pull request with a clear description & related issue link.

Please follow:

• Commit message convention: feat|fix|chore(scope): short summary
• Code style: follow ESLint / Prettier rules used in the repo
• Tests: aim for meaningful unit & integration coverage

Testing & API Contract

I will add a comprehensive Postman collection and exported environment that covers:

• Authentication flows (login, token refresh)
• CRUD for tasks, comments, subtasks
• Webhook lifecycle & retry semantics
• Role-based access & permission edge cases
• Performance smoke tests for bulk operations

When you provide the Postman exports, I will integrate them into the repository (e.g., in /postman) and add CI validations that run Newman (Postman CLI) against a staging stack in CI.

Deployment & Scaling

• Containerized with Docker; multi-stage builds for slim images.
• Use Kubernetes for horizontal scaling; set up HPA on CPU/memory or request rate.
• Database: primary + read replicas, use connection pooling.
• Caching: Redis for hot data & distributed locks (e.g., to handle task claim races).
• Workers: autoscaling consumer group for background jobs.
• Use blue-green or canary deployments for zero-downtime releases.

Security & Best Practices

• Validate & sanitize all inputs; prefer parameterized queries or ORM.
• Rate-limit public endpoints and protect write routes with CSRF-safe patterns where applicable.
• Audit events for sensitive changes (status change, assignee change, permission updates).
• Rotate secrets regularly; use Vault / secret manager for production.
• Use HTTPS everywhere; set strict CORS and CSP policies for any frontend assets.

Observability

• Structured logs (JSON) with request IDs.
• Metrics via Prometheus + Grafana (request latency, error rates, queue depth).
• Distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry) to trace requests through API -> workers -> downstream services.
• Alerts for service errors, high latency, queue backlog & DB connection exhaustion.

Roadmap

Planned high-value items:

• Full Postman collection & CI integration (Newman).
• GraphQL layer for efficient client queries.
• Multi-tenant support with strict isolation.
• SSO (SAML & enterprise OAuth providers).
• Mobile SDKs & webhooks marketplace for easy integrations.

License

This project is MIT licensed — see the LICENSE file for details.

Contact

Maintainer: @aryanghugare Project: TaskStack — https://github.com//TaskStack

Appendix: Useful patterns & conventions

• Error body:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "task_not_found",
    "message": "Task not found",
    "meta": {}
  }
}

• Idempotency: Provide Idempotency-Key header for POSTs that create resources to avoid duplicates on retries.
• Webhook retries: Use exponential backoff and deliver with at-least-once semantics.