Overview
My family is looking at houses across 7 states. We needed a way to compare properties, vote on favorites, and keep notes — something more interactive than a spreadsheet. So I built this and deployed it on my home server.
What's honest here: AI wrote most of the code. I came up with the concept, defined the features, and deployed it on my Unraid server behind Nginx Proxy Manager with SSL. The app is live and the family uses it. I understand the code well enough to maintain it, but I didn't write the majority of it from scratch.
What It Does
- 50 property cards across 7 states with price, acreage, proximity grids, pros/cons, environmental hazard ratings, and monthly cost breakdowns
- Family voting system — each family member rates properties 1-5 stars
- Rankings table — auto-sorted leaderboard by average family rating
- Notes system — per-property family discussion with author attribution
- Property nicknames — custom names that propagate across all UI elements
- Graveyard system — soft-delete properties that go off-market, with restore capability
- Real-time polling — data refreshes every 30 seconds for multi-user collaboration
Tech Stack
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Backend | Node.js, Express |
| Database | SQLite via sql.js (WASM) |
| Frontend | Vanilla JavaScript, CSS, HTML |
| Deployment | Docker Compose on my Unraid server |
| Proxy | Nginx Proxy Manager with SSL at homes.shottsserver.com |
What I Did vs. What AI Did
My work:
- Came up with the concept and every feature requirement
- Deployed via Docker Compose on my Unraid homelab
- Configured Nginx Proxy Manager with SSL subdomain routing
- Maintain the running instance and add property data
- The family uses this daily for real decision-making
AI-assisted:
- Most of the application code (Express backend, frontend JavaScript, HTML/CSS)
- Database schema and API endpoints
- Voting and ranking logic
Why I'm Including This
It's not a showcase of my coding ability — it's an example of identifying a real problem, designing a solution, and deploying it on infrastructure I built and maintain. The app is live at homes.shottsserver.com and my family actually uses it.
What I Learned
- Deploying a real app to my homelab for daily use by multiple people
- Docker volume mounting for SQLite persistence
- How multi-user collaboration features work (polling, upserts, soft deletes)
- The difference between building something AI writes and understanding how it works well enough to maintain it