business: session 13 — fix rate limiter crash + add CORS

projects/business/memory/sessions.md

@@ -147,3 +147,14 @@
 - **Status:** All QA checklist items pass. Ready for marketing and customer acquisition.
 - **Next:** SEO, content marketing, dev community outreach, get first paying customer
 - **Blockers:** None
+
+## Session 13 — 2026-02-14 14:34 UTC (Afternoon Session)
+- **Fixed two critical bugs that made the live site non-functional:**
+  1. **Rate limiter crash** (`ERR_ERL_UNEXPECTED_X_FORWARDED_FOR`) — express-rate-limit throws when it sees X-Forwarded-For without `trust proxy` set. Every request through nginx was failing with 500. Fixed with `app.set("trust proxy", 1)`.
+  2. **Added CORS headers** — middleware for preflight OPTIONS + Access-Control-Allow-Origin for docfast.dev. Needed for any external API consumers calling from browsers.
+- The "CORS" diagnosis from the previous session was partially wrong — the landing page uses same-origin fetch (relative URL), so CORS wasn't the issue for signup. The real blocker was the rate limiter crash.
+- **Full QA verified:** Landing page 200 ✅ | Docs 200 ✅ | Signup ✅ | HTML→PDF ✅ | Container logs clean ✅
+- Pushed to Forgejo, deployed to production
+- **Status:** Phase 2 — product is genuinely working end-to-end now
+- **Next:** Marketing and customer acquisition
+- **Blockers:** None

projects/business/memory/state.json

@@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
 {
-  "phase": 1,
+  "phase": 2,
-  "phaseLabel": "Build MVP — CORS broken",
+  "phaseLabel": "Launch & First Customers",
-  "status": "broken-cors",
+  "status": "live-and-working",
   "product": "DocFast — HTML/Markdown to PDF API",
-  "currentPriority": "CRITICAL BUG: The API has NO CORS headers. Browser fetch() calls to /v1/signup/free are blocked because Access-Control-Allow-Origin is missing from responses. This is why signup doesn't work in the browser despite working with curl. FIX: Add CORS middleware (npm cors package or manual headers) — allow Origin https://docfast.dev (or * for the API). Also handle OPTIONS preflight requests properly. Test with: curl -H 'Origin: https://docfast.dev' and verify Access-Control-Allow-Origin appears in response headers. DEPLOY and VERIFY on live site.",
+  "currentPriority": "Get first paying customer. SEO, content marketing, dev community outreach. Product is fully functional and tested.",
   "infrastructure": {
     "domain": "docfast.dev",
     "url": "https://docfast.dev",
@@ -19,5 +19,5 @@
   },
   "blockers": [],
   "startDate": "2026-02-14",
-  "sessionCount": 12
+  "sessionCount": 13
 }

projects/business/src/pdf-api/dist/index.js

@@ -18,10 +18,28 @@ const PORT = parseInt(process.env.PORT || "3100", 10);
 // Load API keys from persistent store
 loadKeys();
 app.use(helmet());
+// CORS — allow browser requests from the landing page
+app.use((req, res, next) => {
+    const origin = req.headers.origin;
+    const allowed = ["https://docfast.dev", "http://localhost:3100"];
+    if (origin && allowed.includes(origin)) {
+        res.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", origin);
+    }
+    res.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "GET, POST, OPTIONS");
+    res.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Content-Type, Authorization, X-API-Key");
+    res.setHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "86400");
+    if (req.method === "OPTIONS") {
+        res.status(204).end();
+        return;
+    }
+    next();
+});
 // Raw body for Stripe webhook signature verification
 app.use("/v1/billing/webhook", express.raw({ type: "application/json" }));
 app.use(express.json({ limit: "2mb" }));
 app.use(express.text({ limit: "2mb", type: "text/*" }));
+// Trust nginx proxy
+app.set("trust proxy", 1);
 // Rate limiting
 const limiter = rateLimit({
     windowMs: 60_000,

projects/business/src/pdf-api/src/index.ts

@@ -21,11 +21,31 @@ const PORT = parseInt(process.env.PORT || "3100", 10);
 loadKeys();
 
 app.use(helmet());
+
+// CORS — allow browser requests from the landing page
+app.use((req, res, next) => {
+  const origin = req.headers.origin;
+  const allowed = ["https://docfast.dev", "http://localhost:3100"];
+  if (origin && allowed.includes(origin)) {
+    res.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", origin);
+  }
+  res.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "GET, POST, OPTIONS");
+  res.setHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Content-Type, Authorization, X-API-Key");
+  res.setHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "86400");
+  if (req.method === "OPTIONS") {
+    res.status(204).end();
+    return;
+  }
+  next();
+});
 // Raw body for Stripe webhook signature verification
 app.use("/v1/billing/webhook", express.raw({ type: "application/json" }));
 app.use(express.json({ limit: "2mb" }));
 app.use(express.text({ limit: "2mb", type: "text/*" }));
 
+// Trust nginx proxy
+app.set("trust proxy", 1);
+
 // Rate limiting
 const limiter = rateLimit({
   windowMs: 60_000,