Personal Lifecycle Tracker — Technology Stack & Cloud Infrastructure Decision

1. Stack Evaluation & Rationale

Tier	Chosen Technology	Evaluated Alternatives	Rationale
Frontend	React 19 + Vite 8 + TS	Vue, Svelte, Next.js	High performance, instant HMR, strict type safety, zero host builds
Backend	FastAPI + Python 3.11	Express/Node, Go/Gin	Automatic OpenAPI generation, Pydantic validation, async performance
Database	PostgreSQL 16 Alpine	MongoDB, MySQL, DynamoDB	Relational integrity, foreign key cascades, JSONB flexibility
Containerization	Docker Compose	Standalone Dockerfiles	Multi-service local parity with healthchecks and internal networks
Reverse Proxy	Caddy 2	Nginx, Traefik	Automatic HTTPS, minimal configuration, native reverse proxying
Cloud Deployment	Render + AWS (EC2 & Serverless)	Fly.io, Heroku, GCP	Generous free tier, infrastructure parity, declarative IaC (Terraform)
Observability	OpenTelemetry + LGTM	Datadog, New Relic	Vendor-neutral standard, local Docker stack, zero license costs

Render: Blueprint render.yaml & render.prod.yaml, Terraform terraform/render/ & terraform/render-prod/.
AWS: Terraform terraform/aws/ (10.1.0.0/16) & terraform/aws-prod/ (10.0.0.0/16), CloudFormation cloudformation/aws-serverless-lambda.yaml & cloudformation/aws-serverless-lambda-prod.yaml.

Production Web Application: https://d1ca9upoitnq9b.cloudfront.net/ (AWS CloudFront CDN)
Production Backend API Health: https://7ksomsylvke2uawuhhccbfr6hy0agzyb.lambda-url.ap-south-1.on.aws/health (AWS Lambda Function URL)
Interactive Swagger Docs: https://7ksomsylvke2uawuhhccbfr6hy0agzyb.lambda-url.ap-south-1.on.aws/docs
Pre-Seeded Demo Credentials: alex@example.com / password123