Fullstack Schema Sync

Covers the non-obvious parts of keeping schema changes propagated end-to-end: what triggers generation, what breaks silently when you skip it, and how to catch drift in CI before it ships. Skips ORM/schema basics — assumes a schema exists and types need to flow from it.

Discovery

Before writing anything, answer:

1. Stack: Prisma + REST? Prisma + tRPC? Drizzle? Hasura? GraphQL with a schema file?
2. API contract format: OpenAPI spec, GraphQL SDL, tRPC router, or implicit (types shared directly from backend)?
3. Frontend type consumption: Generated client, manual fetch with cast types, or a shared types package?
4. Monorepo or separate repos? Determines whether types can be imported directly or must be published/fetched.
5. Migration workflow: Are migrations auto-generated (Prisma), hand-written (SQL), or both?

Core Patterns