Projects

Why I built it: I picked up chess last year on Duolingo. Playing against their AI Oscar, I only ever learned the outcome (win, lose, or draw), never why a move was good or bad. The analysis sites I tried buried beginners in jargon. So I built my own chess app: an opponent I can practice against, with hints that actually explain the right move. The goal is simple: for every beginner to understand their moves.

• ♟️ AI Opponent: Integrated Stockfish (WASM) in a Web Worker, exposing three difficulty tiers (~400 / ~1500 / ~2800 Elo) via UCI_LimitStrength and configurable search depth.
• 🧠 Game Engine: Wrapped chess.js in a custom useChessGame hook to manage move validation, SAN history, undo, and end-state detection (check / checkmate / draw).
• 💡 Player UX: Built hint suggestions, captured-piece tracking, two-player pass-and-play mode, and a scrubbable move history for post-game review.
• 🎨 Theming: Designed light/dark UI modes plus six board color schemes, persisted in localStorage and applied via data-theme and CSS variables.

• 🎨 Brand & UX: Tailored theme aesthetics and interaction logic with custom CSS/JS for a personalized brand experience.
• 🚀 CI/CD: Streamlined deployment via GitHub Actions, ensuring high availability and seamless content updates.
• 🧩 Custom Shortcodes: Built a D3-powered word-cloud shortcode and a Swiper carousel shortcode reused across posts.