Progress is coming along quite nicely. I've gotten the base project set up, packages installed, the database installed, and I can make queries over http. It's good that I'm able to focus just on this part because I'm finding lots of good ways to clean up a standard all over the place Node Express app, and have a system for settings, using a testing database in unit tests, and separating out controllers from routes. I also wrote a tiny migration tool that I think will work well too.
All this will be a whole lot lighter weight than something like Django or Rails, and I think if I'm just doing APIs and sockets, I won't be losing much. I think this will probably make a decent tutorial code base as well!
If none of those words made sense, I'm making progress is all. I should figure out a way to show something visual with this before the end of the weekend.