This Portfolio
Full-stack developer
A server-rendered portfolio and meta case study built on TanStack Start, full i18n, content-as-code and a signature shader hero.
- TanStack Start
- React
- TailwindCSS
- Paraglide
Problem
A junior developer needs a credible online showcase that proves real skill — not by claiming it, but by being a well-engineered artifact in its own right.
Role
I designed and built the entire site: architecture, design system, internationalization, content layer and deployment pipeline.
Stack
A TanStack Start app rendered server-side, styled with TailwindCSS v4 tokens, localized in four languages via Paraglide, with MDX content edited through Keystatic.
Result
A portfolio that is itself the strongest case study: modern stack, full SSR i18n, content-as-code and Core Web Vitals as a statement of rigor.
Key decision
The hardest trade-off was content-as-code vs. a database-backed CMS. I chose MDX validated by Zod and edited through Keystatic: zero infrastructure, full git history, and a typed boundary that rejects malformed content at read time — at the cost of writing the locale-fallback and validation layer myself.
Outcome
A fully server-rendered, four-language portfolio that doubles as its own strongest case study — shipped on Vercel with content editable from git.
- Languages
- 4
- Database
- None
- Rendering
- SSR
What I learned
- Designing the content schema first made every downstream feature — cards, case studies, SEO — fall out of a single typed source of truth.
- Locale fallback is a boundary concern best tested in isolation, not bolted onto components.
- Treating the portfolio itself as a case study forced rigor I would have skipped on a throwaway site.