Building StrayMate
Why and how I built an app to help stray animals get adopted.
Why I built it
There are a lot of stray animals where I live, and the people who rescue or feed them mostly coordinate over WhatsApp groups. Adoption drives happen, but there wasn't one simple place to post "I found this dog, it needs a home" and have someone nearby see it.
So I built StrayMate.
Stack
- Next.js for frontend and backend
- TypeScript
- Prisma + PostgreSQL for the database
- NextAuth.js for sign-in
- Tailwind CSS for styling
What was hard
Building the screens was quick. Making them easy for people who aren't very online took longer. I cut a lot of fields from the listing form after watching friends try to use it, because every extra field meant fewer people finished posting.
What I took from it
I care more about whether a project gets used than how impressive the code is. StrayMate was small, but it was the first thing I built that I could imagine helping someone I'd never meet.
