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Introducing Changemaker Lite v2

Changemaker Lite v2 is a ground-up rebuild of the platform — same mission, entirely new architecture. After 14 phases of development, the platform is ready for production use.

What Changed

V1 was two independent Express apps stitched together with NocoDB as a data layer. It worked, but scaling features meant fighting the architecture at every turn.

V2 is a unified TypeScript stack:

  • Dual API architecture — Express.js for the main platform, Fastify for the media library, sharing a single PostgreSQL 16 database via Prisma ORM
  • React admin GUI — Vite + Ant Design + Zustand, serving admin, public, and volunteer interfaces from one build
  • 30+ Docker services — from core infrastructure to monitoring, communication, and developer tools
  • JWT authentication with refresh token rotation, role-based access control (11 roles), and a comprehensive security audit

What's New

The feature set has grown substantially:

  • Advocacy campaigns with postal code → representative lookup, email sending, response walls, and moderation
  • Map & canvassing with multi-provider geocoding, polygon territories, GPS-tracked volunteer sessions, and walking route generation
  • Media manager with video upload, FFprobe metadata extraction, scheduled publishing, analytics, and a public gallery
  • Landing page builder powered by GrapesJS with drag-and-drop editing
  • Payments via encrypted Stripe integration — products, donations, and subscription plans
  • SMS campaigns via a Termux Android bridge
  • Team communication with self-hosted Rocket.Chat and Jitsi Meet
  • People CRM aggregating contacts across all modules with duplicate detection and merge
  • Volunteer social features — friend system, achievements, leaderboards, and a personal calendar
  • One-command install — curl | bash pulls a release tarball and runs the config wizard

Why Self-Hosted

Every subscription to corporate campaign software funds infrastructure you don't control. Your voter lists, canvassing outcomes, and communication patterns become assets on someone else's balance sheet.

Changemaker Lite costs roughly the price of a VPS — often under $50/month for the full stack. But the real value isn't cost savings. It's control. No vendor can cut off your access. No acquisition can change your terms.

Read more in our Philosophy page.

Get Started

curl -fsSL https://gitea.bnkops.com/admin/changemaker.lite/raw/branch/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

Or follow the Getting Started guide for a walkthrough.

What's Next

Phase 15 (Testing & Polish) is underway. We're also working on:

  • Social Calendar Phase B (shared views, availability finder)
  • Expanded test coverage
  • Performance optimization for large location datasets

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