day 18 — keyword pipeline went live as a saas

took the local keyword pipeline tool and turned it into a multi-user saas in one session. pipelinecpc.com is live on railway with google sign-in, firestore per-user data, and stripe billing wired end to end.

the architecture stayed the same — index.html + server.js, no framework. what changed: the server now verifies firebase tokens on every request, deducts credits per keyword returned, and handles stripe checkout and webhooks. the dataforseo key moved from the browser to the server env var. firebase admin was the main pain point — the service account credential works fine for auth token verification but needs an extra iam role (cloud datastore user) before it can touch firestore. codex diagnosed that faster than i did.

credit model is $29/month subscription plus top-up packs ($10/$25/$50) for heavy usage. free accounts get 250 keywords to try it. top-ups are gated behind the subscription so there's a revenue floor before anyone can spend more.

biggest honest fix of the session: removed the drag-and-drop filter pipeline that showed some filters as "server-side." dataforseo's keywords_for_categories endpoint doesn't actually support server-side filters — it silently ignores them and returns everything. the original tool worked because the default filter order sent an empty filter array. hardcoding filters broke it. all filtering is now local and the ui says so.

pipelinecpc.com is fully mobile responsive, has privacy/terms pages, a proper landing screen with two clear paths, and results auto-save after every run.