1. Summary of changes
The installer-created account is no longer special. "Owner" is now literally renamed Administrator and behaves exactly like the existing role/permission system already allowed — the codebase turned out to already define "administrator" structurally (a StaffProfile whose role holds MANAGE_STAFF), not as a name or a business.ownerId-style field, and last-administrator protection already existed. The real work was: closing the gap between that and a full admin-management UI, fixing two OTP-migration bugs the new spec's requirements exposed, and making the existing protection transactional.
Businesses can now have any number of Administrators, added via Invite Administrator (name + email → OTP-verified before access), promoted/demoted via the existing staff role dropdown (now intercepted with a confirmation dialog when it crosses the Administrator boundary), or removed via the existing deactivate flow.
Two real bugs found and fixed, both required for the spec's "unverified email must not get access":
Invitation acceptance (/invite/accept) never actually verified an OTP — it silently relied on a sign-in path that would have failed for every real invitee. It now sends and verifies a real code, reusing the shared OtpCodeStep UI.
A newly-invited (not-yet-accepted) account could sign in via plain email OTP before ever touching the invite link, because sign-in only checked "does a User row exist," not whether it was verified. Fixed in the shared OTP service, benefiting every invitation, not just administrators'.
Last-administrator protection (already existed) is now transactional — a SELECT ... FOR UPDATE lock on the business row closes the race where two concurrent removals of two different administrators could both succeed.
Administrators (any staff member, in fact) can now change their own email — new address must be OTP-verified before it replaces the login email.
No hidden installer privilege: confirmed via code audit and a live install → the account is a plain Administrator-role staff member, provable identically via the Team UI as any later-added one.
NextChair Manager and platform Super Administrator are untouched.
2. Prisma/database changes
No schema changes. One data-only migration: prisma/migrations/20260905214944_administrator_role_rename — UPDATE Role SET name = 'Administrator' WHERE name = 'Owner' AND isSystem = true. Runs through the normal migration-deploy process; not something to run by hand.
3. How Administrator roles are represented
A per-business Role row named "Administrator" (was "Owner"), isSystem: true, holding every Permission — created identically at install and in dev seed data. This is what "Invite"/"Make Administrator" assign.
Whether a StaffProfile currently counts as an Administrator is permission-based (holds MANAGE_STAFF), not a name check — the same definition the codebase already used for last-owner protection (isStaffAdministrator in staff.service.ts). This is deliberately reused rather than introduced, and stays correct if a business ever gets a custom role that also grants MANAGE_STAFF.
No Business.adminId-style field anywhere — confirmed none existed before this work either.
4. How administrator invitations work
Reuses the existing StaffInvitation model and createStaffProfile/createInvitation machinery verbatim — a new inviteAdministratorAction just pre-selects the Administrator role and uses a minimal Name+Email form (invite-administrator-form.tsx). Acceptance (accept-invitation.ts) now requires a real OTP code sent to the invited email before the account activates — expiry (7 days), resend, and revoke are all the pre-existing invitation mechanics (revoke = the existing deactivate action, relabeled "Revoke Invitation" while pending).
5. How last-administrator protection is enforced
Server-side only, inside staff.service.ts's updateStaffAsOwner (role change) and deactivateStaff (remove), each wrapped in prisma.$transaction that first locks the business row (SELECT ... FOR UPDATE), then counts other active Administrators before allowing the change. Verified with a genuine concurrency test (two simultaneous removals against a 2-admin business) and manually in-browser (see below).
6. Installation flow changes
Only the role name and one line of wizard copy changed ("This becomes the first Administrator..."). No structural UX change — still collects name/email, verifies via OTP, creates/activates the account, assigns the role, exactly as before.
7. Files changed
New: the migration; email-change.service.ts + change-email.ts action + change-email-section.tsx; invite-administrator-form.tsx + add-administrator/page.tsx; 3 new integration test files.
Modified — core: staff.service.ts (transactional protection, isStaffAdministrator), staff-invitation.service.ts, otp.service.ts (onlyIfUserExists fix, email-change purpose), default-permissions.ts, permissions.ts, auth.ts (JWT email-refresh, simplified finalize path).
Modified — actions/UI: owner/actions/staff.ts, staff-detail-panel.tsx, team/page.tsx, add-staff-form.tsx, accept-invitation.ts/form/page, otp-code-step.tsx, profile-form.tsx, installer files, seed.ts, plus a terminology sweep ("owner" → "administrator" copy in breaks.ts/time-off.ts/staff-emails.ts/profile page).
8. Manual testing steps
Sign in as the seeded owner → /owner/team shows an Administrator badge and an "Invite Administrator" icon next to "+". Invite someone, accept via /invite/accept?token=... printed to the terminal (code also prints there) — they land signed in with full Manage access. Promote/demote any staff member via the role dropdown on their detail page — crossing the Administrator boundary shows a confirmation dialog. With only one Administrator left, attempting to demote or deactivate them shows "You can't remove the only administrator. Add another administrator first." Change your own email from Profile settings — the new address must be OTP-verified before it replaces the old one.
9. Deployment steps on the VPS
None beyond the normal deploy process — the migration is a standard Prisma migration that prisma migrate deploy (whatever already runs it there) will pick up automatically. No new environment variables. No changes to NextChair Manager or its authentication.
Verification performed: tsc/lint/unit — all clean; full test:integration — 219 passed (up from 207, all new); full test:e2e — same 36/37 as before this work (the 1 failure is a pre-existing, auth-unrelated flake unrelated to any of this); a full live manual pass covering every scenario above, including the last-administrator block and the email-change JWT-refresh behavior.
Fixed an issue where media manager only shows files uploaded in specific sections.
Fixed an issue with icon picker names.
Removed jumbo rounding and a few other style tweaks.
Delivered:
Super Administrator — env-var provisioned, no StaffProfile at all (structural exclusion from Team/barber-picker/appointments/staff-totals, not a filter). hasPermission short-circuit + new getActingBusinessContext() helper retrofitted across 16 owner pages so it can actually manage the business.
Media Manager — one upload/library/external-URL modal + field picker, backing every image field app-wide. Local-disk storage + Docker volume, SVG rejected, size-capped.
Welcome backgrounds — desktop/mobile images with CSS breakpoint swap.
Business Branding settings — logo/cover/welcome/favicon/icon/colours all editable post-install; cover image finally rendered (was dead config).
Service descriptions — now surfaced on Home and in the booking flow.
Loyalty card — live preview, ColorPicker/MediaPicker/IconPicker, flip removed for a static premium-styled card, Loyalty added to bottom nav. Fixed a real pre-existing bug where the card's configured colour/image/icon were stored but never actually rendered.
Home Screen Redesign — hero gallery + sticky Services/Portfolio/Reviews/Details tabs, backed by a new unified gallery model/service (no hero/portfolio duplication). Details tab surfaces social links and a map that were never shown before.
Google Reviews — real sync pipeline (24h cron, CRON_SECRET-gated, mirrors the existing notification cron exactly), DB-only customer reads, owner hide/unhide + policy management page.
Architecture cleanup — SettingsPageShell extracted from 6 duplicated page wrappers; fixed a second pre-existing bug where branding image fields could never actually be cleared once set.
Verification: 418 tests passing (236 unit + 182 integration, all against a real MySQL database), full typecheck/lint clean across src, and a real Docker build+run cycle — which caught and fixed a genuine bug (scripts/ wasn't copied into the production image, so Super Admin sync would have crashed on every real deployment).
Owner Administration is complete. Summary of this final stretch of work:
Seed data extended with an inactive staff member, a pending invitation, a redeemed-reward fixture, a service with no eligible staff, and a future-appointment fixture for conflict testing — all idempotent, verified against the dev DB.
Testing brought to 179 unit / 86 integration / 27 E2E tests, all passing together on a freshly seeded, disposable Postgres:
Unit tests for every new pure validator (business hours, categories/services, booking rules, loyalty config, staff creation).
Integration tests covering opening-hours conflicts, last-owner protection, staff deactivation/eligibility conflicts, loyalty redemption's atomic race-guard, and owner-vs-barber/business-isolation authorization — all against a real Postgres.
12 new Playwright owner journeys, which surfaced and fixed two genuine issues along the way: a cookie-clearing race condition in the sign-out-mid-test flow (a real, reproducible timing bug, not just a test artifact), and confirmation that seed fixtures upserted by deterministic ID go stale once "today" has moved on — now handled defensively.
Desktop responsiveness: converted the single-column Business Details, Booking Rules, and Loyalty Configuration forms to a genuine two-column layout at the lg: breakpoint (verified via measured element positions, not just screenshots), confirmed mobile stacking is unaffected.
Final verification: clean tsc, eslint, and next build, plus the full three-suite run against one fresh database as the authoritative pass.
Base app architecture:
Route groups for customer, staff and owner.
* Reusable design system with around 20 UI components.
* Complete Prisma schema.
* Authentication with email/password and Google.
* Role and permission model.
* Protected routes.
* Clean separation between features, services, components and shared utilities.
Stefan Lazic