Churv

Churv is a product I designed and built end-to-end: an anonymous, campus-focused social platform for college communities. I wanted to give students a place to talk about what is happening at school without posting under their real names — so instead of identity-first profiles, I built the whole product around codenames, which keeps conversations lighter, more honest, and more community-driven.

What I built

At its core, Churv is a social feed for students. Users browse posts, react, open discussions, and join school-specific conversations. I organized everything around campus communities so the experience feels local and relevant instead of broad and generic. Shipped so far:

• Anonymous posting through codenames
• School-scoped feeds
• Multiple post types: confessions, academic help, marketplace posts, and polls
• Comments and social interactions
• Guest access with a school confirmation flow
• Realtime university chat
• Admin moderation tools
• Blog pages for product announcements

Product walkthrough

1. Anonymous Campus Feed

The feed is the center of the app. Students view recent posts, browse by category, and interact with content in a format that feels familiar from modern social platforms. Each school gets a lightweight digital community board for thoughts, questions, opinions, and campus moments.

2. Category-Based Posting

I didn’t want Churv limited to one type of content, so I built post categories that let the platform serve several student needs in one place:

• Confession for anonymous social posts
• Academic for school-related help and questions
• Marketplace for selling or promoting items
• Poll for collecting quick opinions from the community

Together these make Churv more flexible than a simple anonymous message board.

3. Guest and School Onboarding Flows

I built onboarding for both regular users and guests, plus a school request and vote-confirmation flow so new campuses can join over time. That decision turned Churv from a single-school concept into a scalable campus network.

4. Realtime School Chat

Beyond the post feed, I added a realtime school chat area — a faster, more conversational space separate from the main feed, so the platform supports both asynchronous posting and live community interaction.

5. Admin and Moderation Tools

Anonymous communities live or die on moderation, so I invested heavily in the admin side. The panel I built covers:

• Reviewing pending guest posts
• Monitoring activity and signup trends
• Managing banned users and blocked IPs
• Checking audit logs
• Viewing school chat health
• Handling Facebook sharing workflows for selected posts

The goal is a real operational product, not a UI prototype — moderation is what makes that possible.

Tech Stack

I built Churv on a modern TypeScript stack:

• React 18 for the frontend UI
• TypeScript for safer, maintainable development
• Vite for fast local development and builds
• Tailwind CSS for styling
• React Router for routing and page flows
• Zustand for client-side state management
• Supabase for authentication, database access, RPCs, realtime features, and edge functions
• Deno for Supabase edge functions
• date-fns and other focused utilities for frontend behavior

I architected Churv as a React SPA talking directly to Supabase services. That choice gave me a fast frontend with a backend that handles auth, data storage, realtime updates, and server-side workflows — without maintaining a large custom API layer as a solo builder.

How It Works Technically

I structured the system around a few clear layers:

• The frontend handles the user interface, route protection, post rendering, feed filtering, chat screens, and onboarding flows.
• Supabase Auth manages sign-in, session restore, OAuth callbacks, and verification-related flows.
• Supabase Postgres stores posts, profiles, comments, poll options, chat messages, and moderation-related data.
• Supabase Realtime powers live chat and reactive admin experiences.
• Supabase Edge Functions handle server-side tasks such as Facebook sharing and other protected workflows.

This architecture is a practical fit for a startup-style social product: the stack stays lean while still supporting full product features.

Where It Stands

Churv is live and in an active MVP-to-growth stage: public landing experience, authenticated dashboards, guest flows, school segmentation, post categories, realtime chat, and full moderation workflows are all shipped. I’m currently iterating on Facebook share workflows, guest post approval, auth and profile flow refinements, and the admin experience.

One product, built solo, covering the full surface: feed, chat, onboarding, moderation, and admin — from database schema to UI polish.