What this context does

The pre-launch waitlist: a public funnel that lets visitors register interest before TalkIDE opens publicly. Each registrant gets a unique referral link that moves them up the queue when others sign up through it; platform admins can browse and export the full list, and invite registrants directly into the closed alpha.

It is the front door of the closed-pool alpha: the waitlist feeds the founder-gated invite cascade (UC-08003 / ADR-020).

Scope boundary

• Owns: the waitlist_entry table, the public join form, referral attribution and queue re-ordering, the admin list / CSV export, and the “invite from waitlist” action that mints a founder-direct invite token.
• Does not own: the invite cascade and token tree itself (UC-08003 / ADR-020), account creation (UC-01 Sign Up), email delivery transport (ADR-025 — this context uses it).

Main entities

WAITLIST_ENTRY — id, email (unique — join is idempotent), name, role, optional projectIdea, referralCode (issued to the registrant), referredByCode (attribution), queuePosition, invitedAt, createdAt.

Use cases

Dependencies on other contexts

• ADR-025 Transactional Email (Mailgun) — both the join confirmation and the invite email are sent through the Mailgun transport; in dev/test profiles delivery is a no-op.
• UC-08 Mara Platform — UC-11004 mints a token in the founder-gated invite cascade (UC-08003 / ADR-020); accepting it leads into UC-01 Sign Up.

Cross-cutting

• Idempotency — a repeated join with an existing email returns the existing record and its current queue position, never a duplicate.
• Referral abuse cap — the 50-spot bump is capped so a single referrer cannot jump the entire queue.
• Email transport is real in production — ADR-025 made waitlist confirmation a genuine Mailgun send (previously the UI claimed “we sent a confirmation” while nothing left the building).