Tiramisu

game feature
profile feature

Inspiration

Most social apps are built for speed, scale, and infinite scrolling. They treat meeting people like a numbers game, completely ignoring emotional ease. For Gen Z, trying to find new friends nearby shouldn’t feel like a high-pressure interview or an awkward cold introduction. We built Tiramisu because we wanted a digital space that focuses on the human element—trading algorithmic pressure for low-stakes, welcoming interactions that make casual conversation feel natural.

What it does

Tiramisu is a warm, playful social discovery web app that helps people find common ground nearby without the stress. Instead of exposing exact personal pins, it uses a privacy-first, approximate location map. Users can filter by shared energy, browse personality-focused profile cards, and head into the Joy Room—a space filled with lightweight "Would You Rather" icebreakers that take the weight out of sending the first message. The entire layout is calm, approachable, and designed to feel cozy from the first tap.

How we built it

We engineered Tiramisu as a highly responsive prototype with a production-ready foundation: • Frontend: React + TypeScript with Vite for a blazing-fast, type-safe development loop. • Backend & DB: Designed a Supabase-ready architecture with a locked-in database schema and Row-Level Security (RLS) rules ready for real data persistence. • Design: A fully custom, highly responsive UI themed system tailored to feel native on both mobile and desktop. • Deployment: Structured through Vercel with custom rewrites to keep client-side routes intact during page refreshes.

Challenges we ran into

Building a location-based social app without compromising user safety was tough. We had to iterate constantly to get our approximate location model right—making sure the map felt alive and local without exposing anyone's actual front door. We also had to ensure that client-side routing didn't break on refreshes when deployed statically, which required setting up strict edge routing rules in our configuration.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are incredibly proud of our graceful demo state. If the Supabase backend keys aren't actively hooked up, the app doesn't just crash or break. Instead, it handles the missing config beautifully, pulling seamless mock data from local storage so judges and users can interact with the map, messaging UI, and Joy Room without a single error block.

What we learned

We learned that designing for emotional comfort is just as important as engineering for performance. A calm color palette, intentional micro-interactions, and low-pressure UX copy change how users approach talking to strangers. We also leveled up our architecture skills by building data structures that are completely decoupled, allowing us to pivot from local demo data to real Supabase integration effortlessly.

What's next for Tiramisu

We are just getting started with this prototype. Next up, we are hooking up live Supabase Auth for persistent user sessions. We also plan to integrate our next big feature: voice note flows with audio transcription to make the Joy Room prompts even more expressive, dynamic, and accessible.