Frontpage - A Quiet Luxury RSS Reader built with Next.js 16 & Prisma

What are you most proud of, and what would you do differently next time?

I am most proud of achieving a "Quiet Luxury" aesthetic while maintaining high technical performance. Implementing Next.js 16 and Server Actions allowed me to create a seamless user experience where data fetching and state updates (like marking articles as read or saving bookmarks) feel nearly instantaneous. The architecture is clean, and the UI is devoid of unnecessary clutter, focusing purely on the reading experience.

What I'd do differently: If I were to start over, I would adopt a "Mobile-First" approach from the very first line of CSS. While the desktop version turned out beautifully, adapting the fixed sidebar and complex layouts for mobile screens later in the process presented some challenges. Integrating a more robust testing suite (like Playwright) earlier on would also have helped catch minor UI regressions during the responsive refactoring.

What challenges did you encounter, and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge was handling the responsive layout transitions for the sidebar. Managing a fixed sidebar on desktop that transforms into a dynamic mobile drawer required careful orchestration of Tailwind's responsive utilities and React state. I encountered "layout shifts" and "ghost padding" issues where the main content wouldn't correctly fill the screen on smaller devices.

I overcame this by refactoring the layout hierarchy, moving the mobile header logic into a dedicated client component, and utilizing Tailwind’s lg: prefixes to precisely control the padding-left values relative to the sidebar's width. Another challenge was RSS parsing performance; I optimized this by implementing a server-side synchronization logic that keeps the database snappy without blocking the main UI thread.

What specific areas of your project would you like help with?

Performance with Large Feeds: Currently, the "Infinite Scroll" works well, but I’m looking for advice on optimizing the Prisma queries further when a user has thousands of unread items across 50+ sources.

OPML Logic: I am planning to add an OPML import/export feature. If anyone has experience with robust XML parsing strategies for messy OPML files within Next.js Server Actions, I’d love to hear your recommendations.

Dark Mode Theming: I'm curious if my current CSS variable structure (tokens.css) is the most efficient way to scale for a full "Dark Mode" implementation using Tailwind v4's new engine.