A solo dev journey from frustration to product launch

The Frustration That Started It All

I love ClickUp. It’s where my team lives — tasks, docs, wikis, everything connected.

But every time I needed to share documentation with a client, I hit the same wall:

doc.clickup.com/d/2kxuepwx-192

That URL. That ugly, branded, unprofessional URL.

Clients would ask: "Why are we using ClickUp? Can you put this on your website?"

So I’d spend hours:

• Exporting to PDF (formatting breaks)
• Copy-pasting to Notion (links break)
• Rebuilding in GitBook (context lost)

I found workarounds like Cloakist, but they just proxy the ClickUp page — clients could still click around and find internal stuff.

Then I went digging.

I searched Reddit, ClickUp forums, and feedback boards. Turns out I wasn’t alone:

"Shared doc.clickup.com with a prospect. They thought we use ClickUp internally and bailed." — r/clickup

"Want to share the onboarding section. Can’t without exposing the entire task roadmap." — feedback.clickup.com

"Docs export breaks embeds, bullets vanish. Recreating in Notion costs 4 hours of work." — Agency PM on Reddit

Hundreds of people had the same frustration. Agencies, SaaS teams, freelancers — all stuck with the same problem.

One night, I thought: What if I could solve this for myself AND for them?

That’s how Wikibeem was born.

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The Tech Stack

I built Wikibeem as a solo developer over several months. Here’s what powers it:

Frontend

• Next.js 16 with App Router
• React 19
• Tailwind CSS 4
• Server and Client Components for optimal performance

Backend

• Next.js API Routes — no separate backend needed
• PostgreSQL with Prisma ORM
• Vercel for hosting and edge functions

Authentication & Payments

• NextAuth v5 (beta) — credentials + OAuth ready
• Paddle — for subscriptions (handles global taxes automatically)

The ClickUp Integration

• ClickUp API v3 — OAuth 2.0 flow
• Axios for API calls
• Custom sync engine that handles nested pages, wikis, and doc hierarchies

Content Processing

• Marked — Markdown to HTML conversion
• Cheerio — HTML manipulation and cleaning
• Turndown — HTML to Markdown when needed

Search & SEO

• Fuse.js — client-side fuzzy search
• Custom SEO per site and per document
• Auto-generated sitemaps

Domain Management

• Vercel SDK — programmatic custom domain setup
• Automatic SSL certificates

Internationalization

• next-intl — 9 languages supported
• English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Chinese

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The Architecture

Here’s how Wikibeem works under the hood:

┌─────────────────┐     OAuth      ┌─────────────────┐
│   ClickUp API   │◄──────────────►│    Wikibeem     │
│   (Your Docs)   │                │    (Next.js)    │
└─────────────────┘                └────────┬────────┘
│
┌───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┐
│                       │                       │
┌─────▼─────┐          ┌──────▼──────┐         ┌──────▼──────┐
│ PostgreSQL │          │   Vercel    │         │   Paddle    │
│  (Prisma)  │          │  (Domains)  │         │ (Payments)  │
└───────────┘          └─────────────┘         └─────────────┘

The Data Model

User
└── Workspace (ClickUp connection)
└── Site (your docs website)
├── Documents (synced from ClickUp)
│    └── Children (nested pages)
├── Domain (custom domain)
├── Theme (colors, logo)
└── SEO Settings

---

The Hardest Part: Syncing ClickUp Docs

ClickUp’s API is... interesting. Docs can have:

• Nested pages
• Wikis with their own structure
• Content in different formats (JSON blocks, Markdown, HTML)

My sync engine had to:

1. Fetch all docs from a workspace
2. Recursively process pages and their children
3. Convert content to clean HTML
4. Build a hierarchy with parent-child relationships
5. Generate unique slugs for URLs
6. Handle updates without creating duplicates

The trickiest bug? ClickUp sometimes returns a page that’s actually a root doc. Took me days to figure out why I had duplicate content everywhere.

// The fix: Track root doc IDs and filter them out
const rootDocIds = new Set(docs.map(d => d.id))

// When processing pages, skip if it's actually a root doc
if (rootDocIds.has(page.id)) {
continue // This page is a doc, not a child page
}

Performance Optimization

The first version was slow. Each document checked slug uniqueness with a database query.

For 100 pages = 100+ database round trips. 💀

The fix: In-memory slug tracking.

const existingSlugs = new Set<string>()

// Instead of: await prisma.document.findUnique(...)
// Now: existingSlugs.has(slug)

existingSlugs.add(newSlug) // Track immediately

Sync time dropped from 30+ seconds to under 10.

---

Custom Domains: The Magic

This was the feature I was most excited about.

Using Vercel’s SDK, I can programmatically:

1. Add a domain to the project
2. Return DNS records for the user to configure
3. Verify domain ownership
4. Auto-provision SSL certificates

const vercel = new Vercel({ accessToken: process.env.VERCEL_TOKEN })

// Add domain
await vercel.projects.addProjectDomain({
idOrName: projectId,
requestBody: { name: 'docs.yourcompany.com' }
})

// Get verification records
const config = await vercel.domains.getDomainConfig({
domain: 'docs.yourcompany.com'
})

The user adds a CNAME record, clicks "Verify," and boom — their docs are live on their domain with HTTPS.

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Things I’d Do Differently

1. Write More Tests

The sync logic is complex. I’ve caught bugs manually that tests would have caught faster.

2. Ship Faster

I spent too long on "perfect" features. Should have launched with 50% of what I have now.

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What’s Next

• Real-time sync — webhook integration with ClickUp
• Analytics — see which docs people read
• Password-protected docs — for private client portals
• More themes
• API access — for power users

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Try It Yourself

Wikibeem is live at wikibeem.com.

Connect your ClickUp workspace, sync your docs, add your domain.

Under 5 minutes to a professional documentation site.

I’m building this in public and genuinely want feedback. What features would make this useful for you? What’s missing?

DM me on Twitter/X or LinkedIn.

Let’s build this together.