building AdsMetri — a Meta Ads dashboard in one session

started with a clear brief: a tool that makes Meta Ads data easier to read and act on. budget management, trend visualization, scheduled execution. one session. tRPC on Express, React 19, MySQL via Drizzle, Tailwind 4. the Manus template handles auth and hosting, so the first hour was pure feature work.

the hardest part wasn't the code. it was the layout. the sidebar kept fighting the main content — first a duplicate ml-64, then nested <main> elements inside SidebarInset, then content clipping from the fixed sidebar not being accounted for in the page wrapper. each fix looked right in isolation and broke something else. final layout: fixed sidebar, md:pl-64 on the content wrapper, no nesting tricks.

demo mode was the other pain point. in a private tab, auth.me fires on mount and returns UNAUTHED. the global error handler was catching that and redirecting to sign-in before the user could click "Try Demo". fix: exclude auth.me queries from the redirect logic — that query is a state check, not a protection gate. shipped: dashboard, budget queue, expandable ad sets, spend distribution, demo mode. live Meta sync and the production cron are wired but not flipped on yet.