EarlyPass

Drop-in viral waitlist widget with referral mechanics, leaderboard, and analytics.

Add a viral waitlist to any site in 5 minutes. Referral tracking, milestone rewards, leaderboard, analytics, and access granting — built API-first so human founders and AI agents can manage campaigns programmatically.

Open-source (Business Source License). Free to self-host.

Work in progress — not production ready. This project is under active development. APIs may change, features may be incomplete, and it has not been hardened for production use. Use at your own risk.

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Quick Start (Self-Hosted)

Docker Compose (recommended):

curl -O https://www.earlypass.app/docker-compose.yml
export DASHBOARD_JWT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)
docker compose up -d

Single container (bring your own Postgres + Redis):

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 \
  -e DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:pass@host:5432/earlypass" \
  -e REDIS_URL="redis://host:6379" \
  -e DASHBOARD_JWT_SECRET="$(openssl rand -hex 32)" \
  ghcr.io/earlypass/earlypass:latest

Kubernetes (Helm):

helm install earlypass oci://ghcr.io/earlypass/charts/earlypass \
  --set secrets.databaseUrl="postgres://..." \
  --set secrets.dashboardJwtSecret="$(openssl rand -hex 32)"

See the self-hosting guide for full setup instructions.

Embed the Widget

<script src="https://earlypass.example.com/widget/widget.js"
  data-campaign="your-campaign-slug">
</script>

Domain restriction: If you set a product_url on your campaign, the widget will only accept signups from that origin. Requests from other origins are rejected with 403. Leave product_url empty to allow embeds from any origin.

MCP Server

EarlyPass exposes a hosted Model Context Protocol server at /mcp, enabling AI agents and MCP clients (Cursor, Claude Desktop, MCP Inspector, etc.) to manage waitlist campaigns programmatically.

Connecting

Point your MCP client at:

https://your-earlypass-domain.com/mcp

The endpoint uses MCP Streamable HTTP transport. Authentication is via OAuth 2.1 (PKCE) — clients that support dynamic client registration (e.g. MCP Inspector, Claude Desktop) will discover and complete the flow automatically using:

GET /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server
POST /oauth/register     (dynamic client registration — RFC 7591)
GET  /oauth/authorize
POST /oauth/token

Alternatively, pass an account API key (ep_acc_...) as a Bearer token for non-interactive use:

Authorization: Bearer ep_acc_your_key_here

Available Tools

Tool	Description
list_campaigns	List all campaigns for the authenticated account
create_campaign	Create a new waitlist campaign
get_campaign	Get campaign details by ID
update_campaign	Update campaign settings
get_campaign_stats	Get signup counts, referral totals, and daily breakdown
list_signups	List signups for a campaign with pagination and status filter
export_signups	Export all signups as JSON or CSV (up to 10,000 rows)
invite_signups	Grant access to the top N verified signups (sends invite emails)
get_invite_token	Check whether an invite token is active or redeemed
redeem_invite_token	Mark an invite token as redeemed (idempotent)
manage_webhook	Create, list, or delete webhook endpoints for a campaign
get_leaderboard	Get top referrers ranked by referral count
get_widget_embed	Get the <script> embed snippet for a campaign

All tools require account-level authentication and enforce campaign ownership — you can only operate on campaigns belonging to your account.

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Access Granting & Invite Tokens

When you invite signups via POST /api/v1/campaigns/{id}/signups/invite, each invitee receives an email with a personalised link containing ?invite=<token>. Your product backend can verify and redeem these tokens:

GET  /api/v1/invites/{token}        → { status: "active"|"redeemed", email, ... }
POST /api/v1/invites/{token}/redeem → marks token redeemed (idempotent)

Tokens expire 30 days after the invite is sent. No Bearer auth required — the token is the credential.

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Local Development

Prerequisites

• mise — manages Go 1.26 + Node 22
• kind — local Kubernetes cluster (brew install kind)
• ctlptl — cluster + local registry manager (brew install tilt-dev/tap/ctlptl)
• tilt — dev environment orchestrator (brew install tilt)
• kubectl and helm (used internally by Tilt)

mise install       # installs Go 1.26 + Node 22

One-time cluster setup

make cluster-up    # creates the Kind cluster (only needed once)

Start the full stack

make dev           # runs tilt up — starts all services in Kubernetes

Open the Tilt UI at http://localhost:10350 to monitor all resources. The Go app is rebuilt and redeployed automatically when .go files change.

• API: http://localhost:3000/api/v1/
• Dashboard: http://localhost:3000/dashboard/
• Widget: http://localhost:3000/widget/widget.js
• MCP: http://localhost:3000/mcp
• Jaeger tracing UI: http://localhost:16686
• Prometheus: http://localhost:9090
• Grafana dashboards: http://localhost:3001

Individual commands

make build          # compile the server binary → bin/server
make build-widget   # bundle the JS widget → widget/dist/widget.js

make test               # unit tests
make test-integration   # integration tests (needs Docker)
make check              # vet + lint + unit tests — run before every commit

make generate       # regenerate Go types from api/openapi.yaml
make migrate        # run pending DB migrations
make migrate-down   # roll back the last migration

Health check

curl localhost:3000/healthz
# → {"status":"ok","components":{"database":"ok","redis":"ok"}}

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
DATABASE_URL	yes	PostgreSQL connection string
REDIS_URL	yes	Redis connection string
EMAIL_FROM	no	From address for transactional email
RESEND_API_KEY	no	Resend API key (leave empty to disable email)
BASE_URL	no	Public base URL used to build links in emails, e.g. https://api.earlypass.app (no trailing slash)
DASHBOARD_JWT_SECRET	no	HMAC-SHA256 key for dashboard auth cookies (openssl rand -hex 32). Random per-process key used if unset — sessions won't survive restarts
DEV_MODE	no	Set to true to enable dev-only endpoints (email preview). Never set in production
TRUSTED_PROXIES	no	Comma-separated CIDR ranges trusted to set X-Real-IP/X-Forwarded-For, e.g. 10.0.0.0/8
PORT	no	HTTP port (default: 3000)
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT	no	OTLP collector endpoint for traces
ADMIN_API_KEY	no	Bearer token for the admin API. Admin API disabled if unset
ADMIN_PORT	no	Admin API port (default: 3001). Should be firewalled in production
SIGNUP_MODE	no	open (default) or closed. Closed mode restricts sign-up to pre-existing accounts

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
API server	Go 1.26, chi router
Database	PostgreSQL 16 (pgx/v5, no ORM)
Cache / rate limiting	Redis 7 (go-redis)
Observability	OpenTelemetry → OTLP → Jaeger (traces) + Prometheus + Grafana (metrics)
Widget	Vanilla TypeScript, esbuild IIFE, Shadow DOM, < 20KB gzipped
Dashboard	Preact + htm (no build step), embedded in Go binary
MCP server	mark3labs/mcp-go (stdio + SSE/streamable HTTP)
Deployment	Docker / Docker Compose / Kubernetes (Helm chart)

Documentation

Guide	Description
Getting Started	Create a campaign, embed the widget, invite users
Widget Reference	Data attributes, theming, dark mode
API Reference	Interactive REST docs (Scalar)
MCP Server	Claude Desktop & Cursor integration

License

Business Source License 1.1 — free to self-host, competing SaaS offering not permitted. Converts to Apache 2.0 on 2030-03-02.