Phasma: My Old Learning Project, Rebuilt Into a Full-Blown Production App

Phasma started years ago as the project I used to actually learn Angular, Node, Docker, and Kubernetes — the kind of throwaway app you build specifically to break things and figure out how they work. I just finished completely rewriting it, and it's not a throwaway anymore.

The stack is now Svelte on the frontend and Go on the backend, fully expanded with hashtags, @username support in posts, real search, and a complete modern glassmorphism redesign.

That first build taught me a stack. This one taught me something I'd never really practiced: AI-assisted engineering — working through UI/UX itself, hierarchy, contrast, spacing, motion, in rounds with Claude and GPT instead of framework docs. Different kind of learning project, same instinct to ship it once it actually worked.

It's gone from "thing I learn with" to a full-blown product — feed, profiles, likes, comments, notifications, the works — ready to delight with its visuals and scale with the infra powering it.