vishnu-naik-chouhan/mern-backend-js ? reverse-engineered prompt

Build me a simple Node and Express backend for a CRUD app using MongoDB and Mongoose.

I want a clean API with routes, controllers, services, validation, and error handling, so it feels like a good starter for a real MERN project. Please include basic create, read, update, and delete operations, plus request logging, CORS, and environment config with dotenv. Make it easy to run in development with automatic restart, and organize the code so it is easy to expand later into authentication, pagination, filtering, sorting, search, and the other backend phases I might add next.

Set it up in a way that is simple to understand, with a working server, MongoDB connection, and a few example endpoints for one sample resource. If you need current package usage or best practices, look them up online. Keep the code tidy and practical, like a real project I can build on from here.