# Build brief — a focused alternative to Lemon Squeezy

> **Verdict:** Not faithfully · **Buildability:** 15/100 · **Category:** Creator Commerce
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/lemon-squeezy
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Lemon Squeezy. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**Lemon Squeezy** — Sell a digital product with Stripe while explicitly leaving tax remittance to the creator. It currently costs Variable pricing.

A consolation build is possible, but the paid product's decisive value sits outside a solo rebuild. For Lemon Squeezy, sell a digital product with Stripe while explicitly leaving tax remittance to the creator. The hard boundary is merchant-of-record tax, payments, fraud, licensing, subscriptions, and global compliance, plus payments, tax, distribution, and operations.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Lemon Squeezy that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

Sell a small catalog of digital products through Stripe, deliver purchased files or lessons, and manage customers from a user-owned storefront, leaving tax remittance explicitly to the creator.

- Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- Stripe account.
- PostgreSQL.
- S3-compatible storage.
- Public HTTPS deployment.
- Email provider.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build a closest honest personal substitute for Lemon Squeezy in an empty repository.
Use Next.js 15, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Drizzle ORM, Stripe Checkout, and S3-compatible storage; do not offer alternative stacks.
The core loop is: sell a small catalog of digital products through Stripe, deliver purchased files or lessons, and manage customers from a user-owned storefront, leaving tax remittance explicitly to the creator.
Make the first run work locally with one documented command.
Store all user data locally by default and make export straightforward.
Put secrets in .env, ship .env.example, and never commit credentials.
Implement products, variants, prices, files or lessons, coupons, customers, orders, and entitlements.
Use Stripe-hosted Checkout and verify every webhook signature and idempotency key.
Grant access only after confirmed payment and revoke it on refund or chargeback.
Create a customer library with signed short-lived download or lesson URLs.
Add order search, resend receipt, refund handoff, export, and an immutable event log.
Document taxes as the creator's responsibility and do not calculate unsupported jurisdictions.
Include clear empty, loading, success, and recoverable error states.
Add input validation, safe filenames, and graceful handling of unavailable APIs.
Write focused tests for the core transformation and one end-to-end happy path.
Create a README with setup, architecture, permissions, data location, and backup steps.
Do not add accounts, billing, telemetry, analytics, or a hosted control plane.
Do not claim to reproduce proprietary data, network liquidity, regulated access, or frontier infrastructure.
Deliberately leave out merchant-of-record tax remittance.
Deliberately leave out a buyer marketplace or affiliate network.
Deliberately leave out advanced communities, certificates, mobile apps, and enterprise learning features.
Finish by running the tests and listing the exact commands used.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- Merchant-of-record tax, payments, fraud, licensing, subscriptions, and global compliance.
- Marketplace discovery.
- Tax remittance.
- Fraud operations.
- Compliance, licensing, and legal accountability are core features.
- Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.

## What you still own after launch

- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.

## Risk

**High consequence.** Use this as a prototype or personal aid. Keep a qualified human and an established provider in the loop for consequential decisions.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: high. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

## Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

- [Medusa](https://github.com/medusajs/medusa) — Active open-source commerce platform with modular checkout and fulfillment primitives

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Generated by [Can It Be Vibe Coded?](https://www.canitbevibecoded.com) · Full report: https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/lemon-squeezy