Powered by Sefaria

A data-centric dashboard for the Sefaria developer ecosystem — a single place to search, filter, sort, and count the independent projects built by community members on top of Sefaria's data, API, and other digital assets.

Why this exists

Sefaria is more than a library. It's also the authoritative data layer powering much of Torah technology, via our API, Sefaria-Export, and more. The most compelling way to tell that story is through Powered by Sefaria — the independent projects the community has built on our data. They're the clearest demonstration of Sefaria's reach beyond the library website.

AI has made it easier than ever to build with our data — this project helps us tell the story.

Goal

A visual way to search, filter, sort, and count projects Powered by Sefaria.

A data-centric home for the developer ecosystem — one place to see the scale and diversity of what's been built on Sefaria's data, enabling deeper understanding of Sefaria as the authoritative data layer for Jewish text development in the age of AI.

Tech stack

• TypeScript (strict), React 19 + Vite 8, react-router v7 (library mode)
• CSS Modules on top of semantic design tokens (src/styles/tokens.css), Lucide icons
• recharts for the unlisted /charts page (lazy-loaded, so it is not in the main bundle)
• Vitest + React Testing Library + vitest-axe for unit and component tests; Playwright + @axe-core/playwright for end to end
• ESLint (typescript-eslint, react-hooks, jsx-a11y) and Prettier

The spec this implements is in docs/REDESIGN_SPEC.md.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

This project uses Vite 8, which is built on rolldown (a native bundler) and requires Node.js 20.19+ or 22.12+. The repo includes an .nvmrc pinned to Node 22, so if you use nvm:

nvm use        # picks up the version in .nvmrc

Install & run

npm install
npm run dev    # starts the dev server at http://localhost:5173

Scripts

• npm run dev: dev server
• npm run build: type-check and production build into dist/
• npm run preview: serve the production build
• npm run lint / npm run format: ESLint / Prettier
• npm run typecheck: tsc -b
• npm test: unit and component tests (Vitest)
• npm run e2e: Playwright (desktop 1440x900 and mobile 390x844). It builds and serves the app itself and runs against a snapshot of the API in src/lib/__fixtures__/projects.json, never the live API. First time only: npx playwright install chromium.
• npm run screenshots: writes screenshots of every screen at 360, 390, 768, 1024 and 1440px into screenshots/

Data

All data comes from one request to https://www.sefaria.org/api/powered-by, made by src/lib/api.ts and exposed to components only through the useProjects hook. Everything else (filtering, sorting, the charts) happens client-side on the ~150 rows. Only projects that are published and consented to display are ever shown.

Routes and hosting

Route	Purpose
/	Browse projects. ?project=<id> opens a project's dialog (shareable).
/charts	"Powered by Sefaria in numbers". Unlisted: noindex, nofollow, not linked anywhere.

The build is a static single-page app, so the host must serve index.html for any unknown path (otherwise /charts and deep links 404 on refresh). On Coolify, enable the SPA fallback, or use nginx:

location / {
  try_files $uri /index.html;
}

Troubleshooting

Cannot find native binding / Cannot find module '@rolldown/binding-darwin-arm64'

This is usually caused by running an unsupported Node version (see Prerequisites above) and/or the npm optional-dependencies bug leaving the platform-specific rolldown binary uninstalled. Fix it with a clean reinstall on a supported Node version:

nvm use                    # or otherwise switch to Node 20.19+ / 22.12+
rm -rf node_modules package-lock.json
npm install

Note: ESLint 10 requests Node 22.13+, so on Node 22.12 you may see a harmless EBADENGINE warning during install. It doesn't affect npm run dev. To clear it, install a newer Node 22 (e.g. nvm install 22.13).