Skip to content

PulseStage — Product Vision (1-pager)

Problem

Town halls and engagement surveys are noisy, infrequent, and slow to close the loop. Leaders need a clear way to hear questions, respond live, and track sentiment continuously—without heavy process or vendor lock-in.

What PulseStage Is

  • Open-source, tenant-aware Q&A + weekly micro-pulse listening
  • Team-first architecture with organizational rollup views
  • Real-time presenter UX; anonymous, up-vote–only questions
  • Lightweight pulse signals integrated with all-hands follow-through

Key Features

1. Presentation Mode

  • Full-screen display for team meetings and all-hands
  • Keyboard-driven navigation (Space/Enter=next, H=highest upvoted, Esc=exit)
  • Auto-tagging questions as "Currently Presenting"
  • Real-time updates via Server-Sent Events (SSE)
  • Team-scoped questions for focused discussions
  • Permission-gated (moderators and admins only)

Use Case: Project on screen during meetings, navigate through questions live, team sees answers in real-time.

2. Powerful Search & Filtering

  • Full-text search with PostgreSQL (stemming + prefix matching)
  • Tag filtering (custom tags + defaults: Feature Request, Bug, Question, etc.)
  • Date range filtering for historical analysis
  • Team filtering for scoped views
  • Ranked results by relevance

Use Case: Find related questions quickly, filter by topic/team/timeframe.

3. Customizable Theming & Branding

  • 3 professionally designed themes:
  • Executive Blue: Corporate, trustworthy
  • Modern Purple: Creative, innovative
  • Refined Teal: Balanced, modern (default)
  • Light/Dark mode toggle (per-user preference)
  • System theme detection (respects OS preference)
  • Custom branding:
  • Logo URL
  • Favicon URL
  • Primary/accent color overrides
  • Welcome message
  • Live preview of theme changes

Use Case: White-label deployment, match company branding, A/B test themes.

4. Content Moderation

  • Cascading filters (local + optional OpenAI)
  • Tiered response: Auto-reject (high confidence) or review queue (medium/low)
  • Team-scoped moderation queue for moderators
  • Comprehensive audit trail of all moderation actions

See: /handbook/TRUST_AND_SAFETY.md

5. Multi-Mode Authentication

  • GitHub OAuth (production-ready)
  • Google OAuth (production-ready)
  • Demo mode (development only)
  • Session management with Redis (production) or memory (development)

See: /handbook/AUTHENTICATION.md

6. Email Notifications

  • BullMQ queue with Redis backend
  • Multiple providers (SMTP, Resend)
  • React-email templates for beautiful emails
  • Admin monitoring (queue metrics, failed jobs)
  • Development testing with Mailpit (local email capture)

See: /handbook/INTEGRATIONS/EMAIL.md

7. Weekly Pulse System

  • Rotating cohorts for distributed survey load
  • One-tap email responses (no login required)
  • Anonymity-first design (no userId in responses)
  • Threshold enforcement (only show aggregates when n ≥ 5)
  • Team-scoped with organizational rollups

See: /handbook/PULSE_SYSTEM.md

Principles (Truths & Invariants)

  • Tenant isolation is absolute (data, auth, search, metrics).
  • Anonymous by default; only aggregates above threshold are shown.
  • Contracts > code: OpenAPI, event schemas, and DB invariants are source of truth.
  • Accessibility & performance are features, not afterthoughts.

Out of Scope (for now)

  • HRIS/SCIM deep integrations, advanced analytics modeling, custom role builders.