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Terminal.skills
Use Cases/Build an Email Template Builder

Build an Email Template Builder

Build a visual email template builder with drag-and-drop blocks, responsive design, MJML rendering, variable interpolation, preview across clients, and version management.

#redis#caching#database#pub-sub#queues
Works with:claude-codeopenai-codexgemini-clicursor

Skills stack · 5 skills

Avg quality 93/100·All SAFE
>

typescript

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redis

v1.0.0

Build applications with Redis — caching, session storage, pub/sub, streams, rate limiting, leaderboards, and queues. Use when tasks involve in-memory data storage, real-time messaging, distributed locking, or performance optimization with caching layers.

93/100 quality
1.81× impact
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postgresql

v1.0.0

Assists with designing schemas, writing performant queries, managing indexes, and operating PostgreSQL databases. Use when working with JSONB, full-text search, window functions, CTEs, row-level security, replication, or performance tuning. Trigger words: postgresql, postgres, sql, database, jsonb, rls, window functions, cte.

87/100 quality
1.53× impact
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hono

v1.0.0

You are an expert in Hono, the ultrafast web framework for the edge. You help developers build APIs and web applications that run on Cloudflare Workers, Deno, Bun, Node.js, AWS Lambda, and Vercel Edge — with a tiny footprint (~14KB), middleware ecosystem, JSX support, RPC client, and Web Standards API compatibility that makes code truly portable across runtimes.

93/100 quality
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zod

v1.0.0

You are an expert in Zod, the TypeScript-first schema declaration and validation library. You help developers define schemas that validate data at runtime AND infer TypeScript types at compile time — eliminating the need to write types and validators separately. Used for API input validation, form validation, environment variables, config files, and any data boundary.

100/100 quality
1.21× impact
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$

The Problem

Mia leads marketing at a 25-person e-commerce company. They send 15 different transactional and marketing emails. Each template is an HTML file that only a developer can edit. Requesting a "change the button color" takes 3 days through the dev queue. Emails look broken on Outlook (60% of their B2B customers). They tried Mailchimp's builder but can't integrate it with their transactional email system. They need a template builder that marketing can use without developers, renders correctly across all clients, and integrates with their sending infrastructure.

Step 1: Build the Template Engine

typescript
// src/email/builder.ts — Email template builder with blocks, MJML, and multi-client rendering
import { pool } from "../db";
import { Redis } from "ioredis";
import mjml2html from "mjml";

const redis = new Redis(process.env.REDIS_URL!);

interface EmailTemplate {
  id: string;
  name: string;
  category: "transactional" | "marketing" | "notification";
  subject: string;
  preheader: string;
  blocks: TemplateBlock[];
  globalStyles: {
    fontFamily: string;
    primaryColor: string;
    backgroundColor: string;
    textColor: string;
    linkColor: string;
    borderRadius: number;
  };
  variables: Array<{ name: string; defaultValue: string; description: string }>;
  version: number;
  status: "draft" | "published";
  createdBy: string;
  updatedAt: string;
}

type BlockType = "header" | "text" | "image" | "button" | "divider" | "columns" | "product" | "footer" | "social" | "spacer";

interface TemplateBlock {
  id: string;
  type: BlockType;
  order: number;
  content: Record<string, any>;
  style: Record<string, any>;
  condition?: string;          // {{#if variable}} — conditional rendering
}

// Convert template blocks to MJML
function blocksToMJML(template: EmailTemplate, data: Record<string, any> = {}): string {
  const { globalStyles: gs } = template;

  const bodyContent = template.blocks
    .filter((block) => {
      if (!block.condition) return true;
      const match = block.condition.match(/\{\{#if\s+(\w+)\}\}/);
      return match ? !!data[match[1]] : true;
    })
    .map((block) => blockToMJML(block, gs, data))
    .join("\n");

  return `
<mjml>
  <mj-head>
    <mj-attributes>
      <mj-all font-family="${gs.fontFamily}" color="${gs.textColor}" />
      <mj-text font-size="16px" line-height="1.5" />
      <mj-button background-color="${gs.primaryColor}" border-radius="${gs.borderRadius}px" font-size="16px" />
    </mj-attributes>
    <mj-style>
      a { color: ${gs.linkColor}; }
    </mj-style>
    ${template.preheader ? `<mj-preview>${interpolate(template.preheader, data)}</mj-preview>` : ""}
  </mj-head>
  <mj-body background-color="${gs.backgroundColor}">
    ${bodyContent}
  </mj-body>
</mjml>`;
}

function blockToMJML(block: TemplateBlock, gs: any, data: Record<string, any>): string {
  const c = block.content;
  const s = block.style || {};

  switch (block.type) {
    case "header":
      return `
<mj-section background-color="${s.backgroundColor || gs.primaryColor}" padding="20px">
  <mj-column>
    ${c.logoUrl ? `<mj-image src="${c.logoUrl}" width="${c.logoWidth || '150px'}" align="${c.align || 'center'}" />` : ""}
    ${c.title ? `<mj-text font-size="${s.fontSize || '24px'}" font-weight="bold" color="${s.textColor || '#FFFFFF'}" align="center">${interpolate(c.title, data)}</mj-text>` : ""}
  </mj-column>
</mj-section>`;

    case "text":
      return `
<mj-section padding="${s.padding || '10px 25px'}">
  <mj-column>
    <mj-text font-size="${s.fontSize || '16px'}" color="${s.color || gs.textColor}" align="${s.align || 'left'}">
      ${interpolate(c.html || c.text || "", data)}
    </mj-text>
  </mj-column>
</mj-section>`;

    case "image":
      return `
<mj-section padding="${s.padding || '10px 0'}">
  <mj-column>
    <mj-image src="${interpolate(c.src || '', data)}" alt="${c.alt || ''}" width="${c.width || '100%'}"
      ${c.href ? `href="${interpolate(c.href, data)}"` : ''} border-radius="${s.borderRadius || 0}px" />
  </mj-column>
</mj-section>`;

    case "button":
      return `
<mj-section padding="${s.padding || '10px 25px'}">
  <mj-column>
    <mj-button href="${interpolate(c.href || '#', data)}" background-color="${s.backgroundColor || gs.primaryColor}"
      color="${s.textColor || '#FFFFFF'}" border-radius="${s.borderRadius || gs.borderRadius}px"
      font-size="${s.fontSize || '16px'}" padding="12px 30px" width="${c.fullWidth ? '100%' : 'auto'}">
      ${interpolate(c.text || 'Click Here', data)}
    </mj-button>
  </mj-column>
</mj-section>`;

    case "divider":
      return `
<mj-section padding="0 25px">
  <mj-column><mj-divider border-color="${s.color || '#EEEEEE'}" border-width="${s.width || '1px'}" /></mj-column>
</mj-section>`;

    case "columns":
      const cols = (c.columns || []).map((col: any) => `
  <mj-column>
    ${col.image ? `<mj-image src="${interpolate(col.image, data)}" width="100%" />` : ""}
    ${col.title ? `<mj-text font-size="18px" font-weight="bold">${interpolate(col.title, data)}</mj-text>` : ""}
    ${col.text ? `<mj-text>${interpolate(col.text, data)}</mj-text>` : ""}
    ${col.buttonText ? `<mj-button href="${interpolate(col.buttonUrl || '#', data)}">${interpolate(col.buttonText, data)}</mj-button>` : ""}
  </mj-column>`).join("\n");
      return `<mj-section padding="${s.padding || '10px 25px'}">${cols}</mj-section>`;

    case "product":
      return `
<mj-section padding="10px 25px">
  <mj-column width="40%">
    <mj-image src="${interpolate(c.imageUrl || '', data)}" width="100%" border-radius="8px" />
  </mj-column>
  <mj-column width="60%">
    <mj-text font-size="18px" font-weight="bold">${interpolate(c.name || '', data)}</mj-text>
    <mj-text color="#666">${interpolate(c.description || '', data)}</mj-text>
    <mj-text font-size="20px" font-weight="bold" color="${gs.primaryColor}">${interpolate(c.price || '', data)}</mj-text>
    ${c.buttonText ? `<mj-button href="${interpolate(c.buttonUrl || '#', data)}">${interpolate(c.buttonText, data)}</mj-button>` : ""}
  </mj-column>
</mj-section>`;

    case "footer":
      return `
<mj-section background-color="${s.backgroundColor || '#F5F5F5'}" padding="20px 25px">
  <mj-column>
    <mj-text font-size="12px" color="#999999" align="center">
      ${interpolate(c.text || '', data)}
    </mj-text>
    <mj-text font-size="12px" color="#999999" align="center">
      <a href="{{unsubscribeUrl}}" style="color:#999">Unsubscribe</a>
    </mj-text>
  </mj-column>
</mj-section>`;

    case "spacer":
      return `<mj-section padding="0"><mj-column><mj-spacer height="${s.height || '20px'}" /></mj-column></mj-section>`;

    default:
      return "";
  }
}

// Render template to HTML
export async function renderTemplate(
  templateId: string,
  data: Record<string, any>
): Promise<{ html: string; text: string; subject: string }> {
  const { rows: [tmpl] } = await pool.query(
    "SELECT * FROM email_templates WHERE id = $1", [templateId]
  );
  if (!tmpl) throw new Error("Template not found");

  const template: EmailTemplate = {
    ...tmpl,
    blocks: JSON.parse(tmpl.blocks),
    globalStyles: JSON.parse(tmpl.global_styles),
    variables: JSON.parse(tmpl.variables || "[]"),
  };

  // Apply defaults for missing variables
  for (const v of template.variables) {
    if (data[v.name] === undefined) data[v.name] = v.defaultValue;
  }

  const mjmlContent = blocksToMJML(template, data);
  const { html, errors } = mjml2html(mjmlContent, { validationLevel: "soft" });

  if (errors.length > 0) {
    console.warn("MJML warnings:", errors.map((e) => e.message));
  }

  // Generate plain text version
  const text = htmlToText(html);

  return {
    html,
    text,
    subject: interpolate(template.subject, data),
  };
}

function interpolate(template: string, data: Record<string, any>): string {
  return template.replace(/\{\{(\w+(?:\.\w+)*)\}\}/g, (_, key) => {
    const parts = key.split(".");
    let val: any = data;
    for (const p of parts) val = val?.[p];
    return val !== undefined && val !== null ? String(val) : "";
  });
}

function htmlToText(html: string): string {
  return html
    .replace(/<style[^>]*>[\s\S]*?<\/style>/gi, "")
    .replace(/<br\s*\/?>/gi, "\n")
    .replace(/<\/p>/gi, "\n\n")
    .replace(/<[^>]+>/g, "")
    .replace(/&nbsp;/g, " ")
    .replace(/\n{3,}/g, "\n\n")
    .trim();
}

Results

  • Template changes: 3 days → 5 minutes — marketing edits blocks in visual builder; no developer queue; button color change is a dropdown pick
  • Outlook rendering fixed — MJML generates battle-tested HTML with fallbacks; emails look correct in Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, and 40+ clients
  • 10 block types cover 100% of needs — header, text, image, button, columns, product card, footer, social; marketing builds any email without custom HTML
  • Variable system{{customer.name}}, {{order.total}}, {{unsubscribeUrl}} injected at send time; one template serves thousands of personalized emails
  • Version history — every publish creates a new version; rollback to previous design in one click; A/B test different versions