bfrl.tech

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Inspiration

We looked at social media, saw that everyone was either too curated, too fake, or somehow both at once, and thought: what if your friends were legally obligated by vibes to send a tiny chaotic video every day? Thus bfrl.tech was born, somewhere between friendship, surveillance, and excellent comedic timing.

What it does

bfrl.tech is a mobile-first PWA where users record a 2 second clip every hour, then later create gloriously multi-rewinds with friends. The app lets you capture daily clips, browse friends’ rewinds by day, and generate mashups showing a short glimpse of what you and your friends are up to.

How we built it

We built the frontend with React and turned it into a PWA so it behaves like a real app instead of a website wearing a fake mustache. The backend uses Postgres-backed APIs for auth, friends, and video flows, while browser camera APIs handle recording. In short, we duct-taped modern web tech together until it started making cinema.

Challenges we ran into

Browsers treated camera access like a hostage negotiation. Firefox had opinions. Video composition had even more opinions. Upload flows changed mid-flight, endpoints evolved, and many refactors were done. Also, getting multiple tiny videos to align nicely without looking like experimental punishment was harder than expected.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We got the core experience working: record a daily rewind, browse friend rewinds, and generate multi-rewind mashups in a real friendly interface. We also somehow preserved the extremely specific glossy early-2000s Fruitiger Aero fever-dream aesthetic, which means the app not only functions, it spiritually levitates.