Faster API Responses: Database Index on org_members

Version: v0.1.6
Category: Performance

Overview

With the release of v0.1.6, a database index has been added on the org_members.org_id column. This is a foundational performance improvement that benefits every authenticated request made to the platform.

Background

The platform uses tRPC with an orgProcedure middleware layer that validates organisation membership on every authenticated API call. This middleware queries the org_members table by org_id to confirm that the requesting user belongs to the correct organisation before allowing the request to proceed.

The problem

Prior to v0.1.6, the org_members table had no index on org_id. This meant every middleware execution triggered a full table scan — the database engine read every row in the table to find matching records. The cost of this scan grows linearly with the number of rows, meaning performance degrades as organisations, members, and overall platform usage increase.

Because orgProcedure is called on every authenticated tRPC request, this was not an isolated slow query — it was a systemic overhead applied to the entire API surface.

The fix

An index has been added on org_members.org_id. The database engine can now satisfy membership lookups in logarithmic time using the index rather than scanning the full table.

CREated INDEX ON org_members (org_id);

Impact

	Before v0.1.6	After v0.1.6
Lookup strategy	Full table scan	Index seek
Query complexity	O(n)	O(log n)
Affected requests	Every authenticated tRPC call	Every authenticated tRPC call
API changes	—	None
Data migration	—	None

Who is affected

All users of the platform benefit from this change automatically. No configuration changes, API updates, or client-side changes are required. The improvement is transparent and applies immediately after the index is created during the v0.1.6 database migration.