Moved to streaming SSR and trimmed hydration; Time to Interactive fell 50% on real connections.
See the full storyProof of work
The UI updated in fits and starts and the loading states were an afterthought, so the app felt slower than it actually was. I reworked the data-fetching and the transitions until the interface felt instant even when the network wasn't, and perceived speed did the rest.
Moved to streaming SSR and trimmed hydration; Time to Interactive fell 50% on real connections.
Every developer had their own way to start the app, and half the tooling only ran on the machine of whoever wrote it. I rebuilt the dev experience — one command to run everything, fast feedback, and defaults that made the right thing the easy thing.
Forgiving validation and progressive disclosure; completion on the highest-traffic form rose from 19% to 47%.
State was scattered across a dozen patterns, so a bug in one corner would surface somewhere unrelated and nobody trusted a fix until it shipped. I untangled it into one predictable model, deleted the clever parts, and made the data flow something you could follow by reading.
Replaced a dozen ad-hoc patterns with one predictable store; state-related bug reports dropped 25%.
The interface had grown by accretion and every change risked a regression somewhere nobody thought to check. I set the architecture, drew the boundaries the team had been missing, and made the safe path the easy one so doing it properly stopped costing extra time.
Rebuilt the suite around user journeys and removed the timing hacks; flaky failures fell 40% and red meant broken again.
Build products that respect the user's time, attention, and data.
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