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Next.js 14 App Router: Server components handle data fetching for zero client-side loading spinners.
Security & Infrastructure (Built for Production) Security wasn't an afterthought. Passwords are bcrypt hashed, all API routes validate getServerSession server-side, and I deliberately chose OTP over magic links for email verification to prevent aggressive email scanners from consuming tokens.
On the infrastructure side, this is where SRE thinking shows up. The deployment pipeline is zero-touch via GitHub Container Registry and Docker compose. I implemented a self-hosted Zabbix monitoring system before the platform even went live. Every production component is watched: host metrics, DB internals (slow queries, active connections), SSL expiry, and container state.
What I Learned • Monitoring before you need it: Instrumentation done in a panic during an incident is instrumentation done wrong. • OTP beats magic links: Link-based flows fail silently when email scanners consume the token. OTP ensures a reliable user experience. • Stateless architecture pays forward: JWT combined with no server-side session store meant zero infra changes were needed when traffic scaled. • Privilege separation is cheap early: Running containers as non-root and scoping DB user permissions takes 30 minutes to set up initially, but retrofitting them later is painful.
