Kitvine

Challenge

Influencer marketplaces fail on the cold-start problem: brands who log in and see an empty creator search never come back, and creators do not sign up for a platform with no brands. The product had to read as established from day one without fabricating a single creator, statistic or review, and it had to grow with very little human time per day.

The constraints were deliberate: no fake data anywhere on the public site; site copy that promises only what exists; creators free forever; and every automated action logged so operations never depend on anyone sitting at a keyboard.

Solution

We built the product as a Next.js 16 application with Server Actions, Prisma 7 over Neon Postgres, cookie sessions and Tailwind, deployed to Vercel from the main branch with migrations applied on every deploy. Transactional email runs through Resend on a verified domain.

The cold-start answer was an honest one, modelled on how established directories work: real creators appear as unclaimed listings built only from their public data, badged as such. Brands cannot message them; they can request an intro, which sends the creator a one-time claim link. The listing disappears when the creator claims it. The brand side is built but stays gated until there are enough completed kits to show.

Operations run as scheduled routines. Each day they generate and publish content through official platform APIs, refresh the directory and the search guides, and review new sign-ups. Every routine writes to a shared log and takes a named lock before touching the repository, so parallel routines never collide.

The product and its routines were built with coding agents inside a disciplined loop. Decisions that must not be re-litigated are written in the repository, every change is reviewed before it deploys, and the agents operate under explicit volume caps and stop-on-first-block rules.

Results: what shipped and runs

• Public media kits. Creators build a media kit (rates, audience, content types) and publish it at a public URL with PDF export and a share bar. Kits are indexed, with structured data and a sitemap that includes them.
• Claim flow. Creators found through public data are listed as unclaimed; a one-time claim link turns the listing into a real account, and the listing retires itself the moment the creator signs up.
• Brand side. Brand access requests, invite-only brand accounts, campaigns, applications, invites and collaborations with chat, a status pipeline, content links and reviews. Gated until there are enough creators to show.
• Email. Transactional email through Resend on a verified domain: welcome, request received, invites, application decisions, new applicants, password reset.
• Admin. Approve, hide and verify creators; manage brand requests and accounts; a directory of unclaimed listings; intro requests; signup-source attribution.
• Automated content and publishing routines. Scheduled routines generate and publish daily content through official platform APIs, keep the directory and search pages up to date, and log every action. Routines coordinate through named locks so two never touch the same resource at once.
• SEO content and tools. A guide cluster and two public calculators, interlinked, with Organization, FAQ, Article and Breadcrumb structured data.
• AI-assisted build. Built and operated with coding agents inside a disciplined loop: every change is reviewed and deployed from the main branch. Decisions are recorded in the repository so the agents and the people share one source of truth.

We do not publish user counts or revenue for Kitvine. What we can show is the system itself: open kitvine.com, build a kit, and look at the public pages, the structured data and the tools.