Send-2-Session (archived)

Archived snapshot of the May 3, 2022 deploy state. No longer maintained.

Apps, but no website. Just URLs.

The pitch in one paragraph

Most SaaS products are built — UI, auth, billing, dashboards, the lot. Send-2-Session asked: do they have to be? Stripe already has a Checkout page. Mailchimp already has a campaign signup page. Calendly already has a booking page. What if you could string those existing third-party pages together by their URLs into a complete user flow — and skip building most of the app? Send-2-Session is the orchestration layer that lets you define a "station" for each provider, extract the next session URL from its API response, and route the user onward — no website needed beyond a landing page.

How it works — the Stripe → Zapier → S2S loop

A user defines a flow as a sequence of stations. Each station points at a third-party SaaS page (e.g. a Stripe Checkout link, a Stripe Customer Portal session, a Mailchimp signup form). The orchestration is invisible to the customer — they just click through what looks like a connected sequence of pages.

A live example, end-to-end:

1. The customer hits a Stripe Payment Link and completes payment.

2. Zapier catches the Stripe webhook, creates the next session (e.g. a Customer Portal session), and pushes the resulting session URL to the matching S2S Station.

3. The customer lands on a stable S2S Station URL. S2S resolves it to the latest session URL pushed in step 2 and forwards.

S2S sits between the workflow engine (Zapier/Make/Pipedream) and the customer — providing a stable URL that no-code builders (Webflow, Carrd, Squarespace, …) can embed, while the actual destination is resolved at runtime. That's the gap workflow engines alone don't fill: they orchestrate well in the backend, but they don't give the customer a stable URL to be sent to when the destination URL is generated dynamically per session.

What's in this repo

Folder	What it shows
src/	React 17 frontend (Material-UI 4) — landing, auth, station builder, session routing.
functions/	Firebase Cloud Functions — Firestore triggers and Express server for /station/url/** and /station/customer/** routes.
firebase.json	Hosting + Functions + Firestore + Auth + Emulator configuration.
build/	Compiled production bundle from the May 3, 2022 deploy (preserved as-is).

Tech stack

• Frontend: React 17, Material-UI 4, react-router-dom 5
• Backend: Firebase Cloud Functions (Node.js + Express)
• Data: Firestore (users → stations → sessions hierarchy)
• Auth: Firebase Auth (email/password)
• Hosting: Firebase Hosting + Functions

Status

• Active development: December 2021 – late 2022
• Last build & deploy: 2022-05-03 (live on Firebase Hosting)
• End-to-end loop verified through internal testing: 34 Customer-Portal redirects and 45 Mailchimp-Landing redirects logged through the live deploy
• Original Firebase project no longer maintained
• Frozen snapshot, not under active development

Why archived

The end-to-end orchestration worked. What ended the project was distribution — reaching no-code site owners who'd wire a fourth tool into their stack as a solo builder. Today, AI-native tooling would cut the build effort to a fraction; the validation discipline learned in Digitale Leute School's PM Bootcamp would tackle distribution before code.

What's been redacted

For archive hygiene:

• src/firebase.js — Web API key + project ID replaced with placeholders
• .firebaserc — replaced by .firebaserc.example
• firebase-emulators/ and node_modules/ removed (regenerable)

The compiled build/ bundle is preserved as the original deploy artifact. Firebase Web API keys are not secrets per Firebase's design (security is enforced via Firestore Rules); they are redacted in source for repo hygiene.

Running locally

This is an archive — running it requires a fresh Firebase project. Steps:

1. Create a new Firebase project (Firestore + Auth + Functions)
2. Copy your config into src/firebase.js
3. Copy your project ID into .firebaserc
4. npm install && npm install --prefix functions
5. npm start for dev, npm run build && firebase deploy to ship

Acknowledgements

Initial project scaffolding (React + Firebase Auth + Firestore setup) was inspired by a YouTube tutorial for a URL-shortener (the package.json name shortly reflects that early origin). The session-flow orchestration logic, station/session data model, and Cloud Functions integration are original implementation.

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Restored in 2026 from a local archive of the May 2022 build.