Skip to content

0002. Start from scratch, reuse AddaxAI Connect patterns

Date: 2026-09-03

Status: accepted

Context

AddaxAI Connect is a working self-hosted camera trap platform by the same developer, with authentication, projects with role-based access, Redis-based workers, PostgreSQL, MinIO, Ansible deployment, notifications and a React frontend. The concept architecture proposes deriving Smart Parks Protect from it. The reuse audit found that the generic parts are tightly coupled to the camera and AI domain (one 50 KB models file, image-specific queue payloads, no database tests, Leaflet and Chart.js where this project needs MapLibre and ECharts).

Decision

Smart Parks Protect is written from scratch. AddaxAI Connect is the reference for patterns: the invitation flow, RBAC dependencies, worker liveness heartbeats, structured logging, Ansible roles, backup interlocks, the frontend conventions document and the screenshot sweep. Single files may be copied when a pattern is worth taking as is. Nothing is copied blindly. The reuse audit records per mechanism whether it is mirrored, adapted or left out.

Alternatives considered

  • Fork the repository and remove the camera domain: leaves coupling and dead code, and every later AddaxAI Connect change conflicts.
  • Import AddaxAI Connect modules as a dependency: the modules are not designed as a library and would pin this project to its release cycle.

Consequences

More code to write in phases 0 and 1. A clean domain without camera concepts. Both projects can evolve independently, and improvements found here (streams with acknowledgement, database tests, a lockfile) can be ported back.