Choosing Your Quality Level: Rapid vs Balanced vs Crafted

One of the most unique features of Craft is its three quality levels. Unlike other boilerplates that give you a one-size-fits-all solution, Craft adapts to your project's needs.

Why Three Levels?

Not every project needs the same level of architectural sophistication. A weekend hackathon project has different requirements than a startup's core product, which in turn differs from an enterprise system serving millions of users.

Craft's three levels represent different trade-offs between shipping speed and long-term maintainability:

🚀 Rapid: Ship Fast

Best for: MVPs, weekend projects, solo founders, testing ideas

Team size: 1-2 developers

Timeline: 3-6 months

Users: 0-100 early adopters

What You Get

• Flat architecture - logic directly in tRPC routers
• Functions up to 100 lines (longer is OK for speed)
• Code duplication allowed (within reason)
• Minimal testing requirements
• Focus on working code over perfect code

When to Use Rapid

Use Rapid when you're validating a business idea and need to ship as fast as possible. Perfect for:

• Side projects
• Hackathons
• Landing page + waitlist
• Quick prototypes for user testing

⚖️ Balanced: Pragmatic Quality

Best for: Growing startups, funded projects, small teams

Team size: 3-10 developers

Timeline: 1-3 years

Users: 100-10K paying customers

What You Get

• 3-layer architecture (Routers → Services → Repositories)
• Functions max 50 lines
• No code duplication (DRY enforced)
• 70% test coverage required
• SOLID principles applied

When to Use Balanced

Use Balanced when you have product-market fit and are scaling up. This level gives you enough structure to onboard new developers quickly without over-engineering.

• Post-seed startups
• Products with paying customers
• Teams collaborating on the same codebase
• Apps that need to last 2-3 years minimum

🏆 Crafted: Software Craftsmanship

Best for: Enterprises, long-term products, large teams

Team size: 10-200+ developers

Timeline: 5-10+ years

Users: 10K-1M+ users

What You Get

• Hexagonal architecture (Domain → Application → Infrastructure)
• Functions max 20 lines
• Zero duplication (enforced by CI)
• 100% test coverage on domain and use-cases
• Domain-Driven Design patterns
• Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)

When to Use Crafted

Use Crafted for mission-critical systems that need to scale to millions of users and last 10+ years. This level ensures your codebase stays maintainable even with dozens of developers.

• Enterprise SaaS products
• B2B platforms with SLAs
• Systems with complex business logic
• Products requiring regulatory compliance

How to Choose

Here's a simple decision tree:

1. Are you validating an idea? → Rapid
2. Do you have paying customers and a team of 3-10? → Balanced
3. Are you building for 10+ years with 10+ developers? → Crafted

Can You Switch Levels?

Yes, but it requires manual refactoring. The different levels are architectural patterns, not magical transformations.

Rapid → Balanced:

• Extract business logic from tRPC routers into service functions
• Create repository layer for data access
• Add proper test coverage (aim for 70%)
• Enforce SOLID principles

Balanced → Crafted:

• Extract pure domain entities (no framework dependencies)
• Implement use-cases in application layer
• Move infrastructure to separate layer (repositories, external APIs)
• Achieve 100% test coverage on domain and use-cases

Craft gives you the templates for each level, but migration is your responsibility. It's regular refactoring work, not a CLI command.

The Bottom Line

Don't over-engineer early. Don't under-engineer late.

Rapid gets you to market fast. Balanced keeps you moving as you scale. Crafted ensures you can maintain quality with 100+ developers for a decade.

Choose based on where you are today, not where you want to be in 5 years.