Preparing to join Acta as a technical team member involves familiarizing yourself with several key tools and technologies. Here's a comprehensive guide to help you get started:
Communication and Project Management Tools:
- Slack, Notion, Gmail, and Linear: These are our primary platforms for communication and project coordination. In Linear, pay special attention to understanding effort estimates and the optimal structuring of projects and issues.
Development Environment:
- Cursor: This is our code editor of choice. Spend time learning how to effectively use features like Chat and Composer, as Composer will be an invaluable asset in your development workflow. Additionally, familiarize yourself with Cursor rules and the basics of MCP (Model-Context-Protocol).
Version Control:
- Git & GitHub: Proficiency with Git for version control and GitHub for repository hosting and collaboration is essential.
AI and Code Generation Tools:
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Codegen / Devin: Understanding these products is crucial as we strive to integrate them extensively. Develop a solid grasp of how knowledge is managed within these tools.
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ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude: We utilize these AI tools to craft detailed requirements and implementation plans for our features, which you'll then input into Composer within Cursor. Leveraging these tools effectively can significantly accelerate development time. Develop an intuition for interacting with them to achieve desired outputs.
Front-End Development:
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Next.js 15: Gain an understanding of concepts like Static Site Generation (SSG), Server-Side Rendering (SSR), client vs. server components, API frameworks, and data fetching.
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React 19: Familiarize yourself with Context API, useEffect, custom hooks, and other advanced React features.
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TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Shadcn, TanStack Query, Sonder (for modals): These technologies are integral to our front-end stack. Ensure you're comfortable with their usage and best practices.
Authentication and Backend Services:
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Clerk: Understand the fundamentals of authentication with Clerk, including securely handling authentication in middleware/sessions and integrating authenticated API calls with Firebase SDK or Supabase.
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Supabase & SQL Databases: Develop comfort with Supabase's PostgreSQL databases. Understand concepts like seeding vs. migration, Row-Level Security (RLS), and SQL-based database design.
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Firebase: Familiarize yourself with Firestore and its design principles, Firebase Cloud Functions (both v1 and v2), Firebase Client SDK, Firebase Admin SDK, and Pub/Sub mechanisms.
While this list may appear extensive, our expectation is for you to have a foundational understanding of each area. Mastery isn't required from the outset, but a solid grasp will enable you to integrate smoothly into our workflows. Focus on building an initial intuition about the role and functionality of each tool and technology.