Case study · 2026
Perch Feed
Solo build · reconstructed from a timed frontend assessment
A social-feed product demo grown from five timed frontend-assessment features into a complete app — explore, profiles, threaded comments, and notifications, with an original amber visual identity.
Overview
Five of this app's features — repost, mentions autocomplete, infinite scroll that preserves scroll position, keyboard-driven navigation, and drafts with content warnings — were originally built against a real, proprietary codebase during a timed frontend engineering assessment. That repo isn't mine to share, so I rebuilt just the frontend logic and UX I personally designed from scratch, against a fully mocked data layer, and grew it into a complete product: explore/search, user profiles with followers, threaded comments, and notifications.
The goal was portfolio-grade polish, not an assessment answer: an original warm-amber visual identity (OKLCH color, a small set of named accent roles rather than generic slate-and-indigo), purposeful motion — heartbeat likes, repost spin, staggered card entrance — and a distinct per-page identity via a gradient icon-badge header, all gated behind prefers-reduced-motion.
Highlights
- Rebuilt 5 assessment features from scratch against mock data: repost, @mention autocomplete, position-preserving infinite scroll, full keyboard navigation, and drafts with content warnings
- Extended into a complete social app: explore/search, profiles with followers, threaded comments, and a notifications feed
- Zero real backend — a typed in-memory mock API with simulated network latency, persisted to localStorage so state survives a reload, written to swap for a real backend with minimal UI changes
- One PostCard component with a variant prop drives both the compact feed card and the larger single-post detail view, so the two can never visually drift apart
Stack
- React 19
- TypeScript
- Vite
- Tailwind CSS 4