Indie Kit
Indie Kit · Coding
Indie Kit is an AI-optimized Next.js 16 starter kit for indie hackers and startups. It bundles authentication, payments, email and SEO so you can ship a SaaS in hours.
About Indie Kit
What Is Indie Kit
Indie Kit is a Next.js boilerplate for people who want to launch a SaaS, AI or B2B product without rebuilding the boring parts first. It ships with authentication, payments, email, background jobs, a database layer, SEO and a blog preconfigured, then adds a set of AI coding skills built for Claude Code and other AI editors. The idea is that you start from a working foundation instead of an empty folder.
The kit targets solo founders and small teams, the "indie hacker" crowd the name comes from. Most of those hours go into the same chores every time: wiring a login flow, hooking up Stripe, writing transactional emails, setting up a queue. Indie Kit handles all of it out of the box, and the vendor estimates it saves 50+ hours of build time. A separate bundle of 20+ Claude skills is meant to act like an AI co-founder, generating production-ready auth, Stripe, SEO and database code on request.
Two limits are worth naming. It's a code template, not a hosted platform, so you still deploy it yourself on Vercel or your own host, and you still own the maintenance. And while the documentation and Discord community help, the kit assumes you can read JavaScript or TypeScript. It lowers the amount of code you write, not the need to understand it.
Getting Started
- Buy the kit and download the source, or clone it into an empty project folder
- Follow the setup guide to add your environment keys for the database, auth and payment providers
- Connect PostgreSQL through Drizzle ORM and run the included migrations to create your schema
- Switch on the modules you need, such as Stripe billing or the react-email templates, and start building your product on top
Product Information
A quick look at Indie Kit's pricing, supported platforms, and performance.
Best for
The users, tasks, and scenarios where this tool fits best.
Users
- Solo founders and indie hackers
- Small startup teams
- Developers learning Next.js
- AI-assisted coders
Tasks
- Wiring authentication
- Adding payments
- Building transactional email
- Setting up a marketing site
- Scaffolding background jobs
Scenarios
- A founder with an MVP deadline
- A developer who keeps rebuilding the same login and billing code on every new idea
- A team moving from a prototype to a real launch
- Working with AI editors on a large app
- Shipping a B2B tool that needs multi-tenancy
Key features
Next.js 16 App Router Foundation
The kit is built on Next.js 16 with the App Router, React v19, TypeScript and Tailwind CSS. Components come from shadcn/ui, and the code follows current best practices rather than an old Pages Router layout. You get a modern structure to build on, and the same layout is what the AI skills target when they generate new code.
Authentication With Better Auth
Auth is handled by Better Auth, covering email and password, social login through Google and GitHub, magic links and OAuth callbacks. It adds role-based access control, user management and impersonation for support work. Passwords, sessions and providers are configured already, so you wire your user model instead of the whole flow.
Payments and Billing
Billing ships with integrations for Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, DodoPayments, PayPal and Paddle. It handles one-time payments and subscriptions, and includes plan management, usage quotas and a customer portal. You pick a provider, add your keys and connect your pricing table, and the checkout and webhook plumbing is already in place.
Email System and Sequences
The kit includes responsive email templates built with react-email and supports Resend, SES, Mailgun, Mailchimp and Cloudflare Emails. Automated sequences for onboarding, notifications and marketing are included, along with provider setup guides. That covers the transactional mail most products need to send on day one.
Databases and Type-Safe Queries
Indie Kit uses PostgreSQL with Drizzle ORM for type-safe database operations. Automated migrations and connection pooling are built in, and the stack works with Supabase, Neon, PlanetScale and Upstash. You get compile-time checks on your queries instead of runtime surprises, on a database layout you can host where you like.
SEO and Content
SEO comes built in: automatic sitemap generation, JSON-LD structured data and Open Graph tags, plus a blog built with MDX. The UI components are optimized for search engines, so a marketing page or blog post is ready to index without extra plugin work. For an indie product, that means one less thing to retrofit after launch.
20+ AI Coding Skills
The kit ships a set of more than 20 Claude skills for tasks like auth, Stripe, SEO, database, UI, email, blog, forms, logos, images and the AI SDK. They're meant to generate production-ready feature code inside Claude Code or another supported editor. Because they read the project's conventions, generated code tends to match the existing structure instead of inventing a new one.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Bundles auth, payments, email, database and SEO into one codebase, so there's no weekend of setup before you write product code
- Built on a mainstream stack, Next.js 16, React v19, TypeScript and Tailwind, that you and future hires already know
- The 20+ Claude skills generate feature code that follows the project's own patterns, which cuts prompt wrangling and rework
- Documentation, integration guides and a Discord community cover the common setup questions
- One-time purchase with lifetime updates, so there's no recurring subscription for the template itself
Cons
- It's a self-hosted code template, so you still handle deployment on Vercel or your own server and keep up with dependencies
- Some JavaScript or TypeScript skill is assumed, so it suits developers more than fully non-technical founders
- The AI skills work best inside the supported editors, so teams on a different toolchain get less from that part
- Pricing and feature details can shift between releases, so check the current version before you buy
Frequently asked questions
Indie Kit is a Next.js SaaS starter kit that comes with the core parts of a product already built: authentication, payments, email, background jobs, a database layer, SEO and a blog. It adds more than 20 AI coding skills for Claude Code and other editors, and is aimed at indie hackers and small teams who want to launch fast.
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