The problem

Wanted to tackle the social media pattern end-to-end — feed composition, optimistic updates on likes, comment threading — which is more nuanced than a typical CRUD app.

What I built

An Instagram-style social media frontend with a global feed, post creation, engagement, and profile management.

• Global feed with post creation (image + caption)
• Likes and comments with optimistic UI updates
• User profiles with follow/unfollow and profile editing
• Authentication and protected routes
• Responsive mobile-first layout

Tech decisions worth mentioning

Optimistic UI for likes was the key UX call — the spinner-and-wait pattern made the app feel broken. I update the like state locally, fire the request, and roll back only on failure.

What I learned

Building "engagement" features like likes and comments taught me how much of app feel is about latency perception, not actual speed. Optimistic updates made a mock API feel like a real product.

What I'd do differently

Add image upload to a real CDN (Cloudinary or S3), and swap Context for Zustand — the prop drilling for feed state got ugly.