Social Events Platform
A location-based social networking platform connecting people through in-person events, real-time messaging, and recurring group activities ("squads"). As Fractional CTO, owned technical architecture, shipped core infrastructure improvements, and mentored junior developers on a team of 5.
- Client
- Mucho Hangouts (Fractional CTO)
- Role
- Fractional CTO
- Service
- Technical Leadership & Full-stack Development
- Technologies
- Node.js TypeScript React MongoDB Express
// The Challenge
The platform had grown rapidly with a team of junior developers, accumulating significant technical debt: JavaScript backend with no type safety, React frontend riddled with @ts-nocheck suppressions, fragmented state management, and unreliable real-time features.
New feature development was slowing as developers struggled to understand existing code and avoid regressions. The codebase needed modernization without halting product development.
// The Approach
Migrated to monorepo architecture with pnpm workspaces and shared TypeScript contracts. Created a contracts package with Zod schemas defining API request/response types, enabling type-safe boundaries between Express backend and React frontend with runtime validation.
Rebuilt the real-time infrastructure by refactoring Socket.io from an imperative singleton to a React-state-driven context provider. This fixed reliability issues where notifications and messages would silently fail after authentication state changes.
Extracted typed service layer for the Events API, converting 10+ controller endpoints from raw JavaScript to TypeScript with proper DTOs, error handling, and separation of concerns. Established patterns the team could follow for remaining endpoints.
Modernized frontend state management by implementing React Query with a query key factory pattern, centralizing authentication state, and replacing scattered window.location usage with React Router navigation.
Eliminated 50+ TypeScript suppressions across React components through systematic refactoring of EventDetails, Messaging, Profile, and Onboarding modules.
Mentored 2 junior developers through code reviews and pair programming, teaching TypeScript patterns, debugging strategies, and architectural thinking.
// The Outcome
Shipped a production-ready platform at muchohangouts.com with reliable real-time messaging, type-safe API contracts, and a codebase junior developers can confidently extend.
Established CI/CD pipeline with GitLab and PM2 clustering for zero-downtime deployments. Reduced time-to-merge for junior developer PRs by establishing clear patterns and comprehensive code review.
Team now ships TypeScript by default with Zod validation on all new endpoints.
