localhost - Waypoint

System-Design-Diagram

Inspiration

Some of the places people care about most are also places with no names. A quiet corner, a casual meetup point, (or even where you parked your car) may look insignificant on a normal map, but they can still be meaningful, useful, and worth returning to. Many of these places are not destinations people set out to find. They are discovered while wandering, exploring a neighbourhood, or taking an unfamiliar route. Those moments of spontaneous discovery are often what make travelling on foot enjoyable, yet they can be difficult to revisit later. We wanted to build something that makes it easier both to find interesting places nearby and to remember the ones that matter to you. That idea became Waypoint: an app that treats location as something both playful and personal. It helps users discover nearby public spots, navigate there through a simple compass-style experience, save their own meaningful locations, and share those places with friends or the public. Instead of focusing only on major landmarks or traditional map search, Waypoint is built around the spots that make our everyday experiences.

What it does

Waypoint is a mobile-first location web app that lets users:

save their current GPS position as a named spot
navigate back to saved or shared spots using a compass-style finder
choose whether a saved spot is private or public
categorize locations
add friends and share locations directly with them
discover nearby public spots shared by the community
upvote or downvote public spots

The app is designed to feel lightweight and social, with a focus on personal landmarks and hidden gems.

How we built it

We built Waypoint with a simple three-layer architecture:

Frontend: EJS templates, vanilla JavaScript, and CSS
Backend: Node.js with Express
Database and Auth: Supabase Auth and Supabase Postgres

The frontend handles the mobile UI, location saving, compass mode, search, and sharing interactions. The backend exposes routes for authentication, locations, voting, and friend management. Supabase handles user accounts and persistent storage.

We also used browser APIs for:

Geolocation to get the user's position
Device Orientation to drive the compass experience on supported mobile devices

Public location suggestions are generated by combining distance filters with simple community voting signals.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was mobile browser behavior, especially around GPS and compass permissions. Localhost worked for desktop development, but real mobile testing introduced HTTPS requirements and device-specific sensor permission issues.

Another challenge was Supabase auth and schema consistency. We struggled with auth flow, profiles table, row-level policies, and seeded data so that registration, login, voting, and public discovery all behaved correctly.

We also spent a lot of time improving the frontend UX. Several features worked technically but felt messy in practice, especially the account area, share flow, and saved-location controls. A big part of the project became simplifying and polishing those interactions so the app felt more cohesive on mobile.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that Waypoint grew from the raw idea of a "pinned location" saver to became a small social discovery app with:

a custom compass navigation flow
public and private location modes
friend-based sharing
community discovery with votes

What we learned

We learned a lot about building location-based products for the web, especially the gap between "works locally" and "works on real phones." We also learned how much product quality depends on small UX decisions.

On the technical side, we learned more about: