Technology
Clerk
Clerk is sign-in that does not become a side project. We use it when the product needs users this month, and we keep the rest of the data in a database you own.
What it is
Clerk is an authentication product for modern web apps: sign-in, sign-up, organisations, sessions, and prebuilt components that already look like a product. Perplexity, Prisma, and Cal.com have used it so they did not have to rebuild passwords, magic links, and MFA for the tenth time.
It is a vendor in the critical path. Users, sessions, and organisations live in Clerk until you also write them to your database. That is fine if you treat Clerk as the door and your Postgres as the house.
What it does
Teams use Clerk to get a complete account experience in Next.js quickly: Google and GitHub login, orgs for B2B, webhooks when a user changes. The UI components save weeks. The configuration lives in Clerk's dashboard and in your env.
We map roles to actual screens. The Clerk application is yours. User records that the product needs beyond a profile also live in a database you own.
Why we use it
Accounts and session handling for SaaS.
Organisations, invites, and the ugly states. Keys you hold. A later move to another provider if the brief changes. The prototype already has real accounts. You create a user, invite a teammate, recover a lockout. Then we build the rest.
Login is a door. After the door, the product still has a job.
Built on it
Perplexity
A well-known Clerk customer for consumer sign-in at search scale.
Prisma
Uses Clerk on product surfaces next to its own data tools.
Cal.com
Open-source scheduling with Clerk as an auth option.
Rapha
A commerce brand that has used Clerk on member experiences.
Next.js apps
Clerk is a default auth recommendation in a large share of new Next.js products.
Tell us what needs to ship.
You use a working prototype before the production build goes ahead.