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@unicorn
Founder & Product Engineer·Since 2021
A long-running social and self-expression product, in continuous iteration since 2021 — product direction, authentication, profiles, posts and media, built and rebuilt as the platform matured.
The problem
Building a consumer social product that survives multiple technology and design iterations without losing continuity of product direction or user data.
What I owned
- Product direction and UX across multiple platform iterations
- Authentication, user profiles, posts and media upload flows
- Responsive application architecture, rewritten in TypeScript in 2026
- Ongoing iteration and modernization of the technology stack
Technical challenges
- Maintaining product continuity through several rounds of architecture and stack changes
- Rewriting a live product with real users in TypeScript, with unit and browser tests added along the way
- Iterating on a live consumer product without a dedicated backend team
Engineering decisions
- Firebase as a managed backend to keep infrastructure overhead low for a founder-run product
- Years of progressive modernization, then a full rewrite in TypeScript and Tailwind CSS in 2026, in line with my other TypeScript projects
- A Cloudflare Worker fronting Cloudinary for media, keeping image handling off the Firebase bill
Technology
Next.jsReactFirebaseTypeScriptTailwind CSSVitestPlaywrightCloudflare WorkersCloudinary