Content:

Every developer remembers their first real project — not a tutorial clone, not a "hello world", but something they built from an empty folder to a live URL. This is mine.

What I Built

A blog writing app. Simple idea, but the stack underneath it is anything but simple — Next.js 16, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Prisma ORM,

PostgreSQL on Neon, and Auth.js for authentication. Users can sign in with Google or email, write rich-text posts with a full editor, and

publish them for anyone to read.

The Hard Parts

The hardest part wasn't writing code — it was the things nobody warns you about.

Prisma v7 broke the way database URLs are configured. The migrations I wrote for SQLite completely broke when I switched to PostgreSQL for

deployment. Auth.js requires you to split your config into two files because the edge runtime can't import database clients. Vercel's Hobby

plan allows only one concurrent build, so three CLI deployments queued up and blocked each other for an hour.

None of these are in tutorials. You only find them by hitting them.

What I Learned

- Reading documentation matters more than following tutorials

- Deployment is a different skill from development

- Errors are not failures — they're the actual work

- A working live URL feels completely different from localhost

What's Next

This app is live at blog-writing-app-ashy.vercel.app. The code is on GitHub. I'm planning to add comments, draft/publish states, and maybe an

AI writing assistant next.

If you're a beginner thinking about building your first full-stack project — just start. The broken builds and confusing errors are part ofit. Ship something real.

By
Keerthishree & Claude

keerthishree T S

My First Full-Stack Project: Building a Blog App from Scratch