Building a Habit Tracker in 24 Hours: Tech Stack, Architecture & Key Decisions

I Built a Habit Tracker in 24 Hours – Tech Stack & Lessons Learned I wanted to explore how quickly I could build a production-ready web app. The result: DailyFocus , a habit tracker that's so simple and elegant that people actually want to use it daily. Here's what I built, why it works, and what I learned. The Problem Most habit trackers are bloated. They have notifications, premium features, complex analytics, and a million settings. People don't need that. They need to track their habits and see their progress. The Solution DailyFocus strips away the noise: ✨ One-click daily check-in 🔥 Streak system (current + longest) 📊 60-day heatmap calendar 🌍 Public profiles for sharing 🎁 Referral system with bonuses ⚡ Free, forever The Tech Stack Frontend : React 19 + Tailwind CSS 4 + Framer Motion Backend : Express + tRPC 11 + MySQL Auth : Manus OAuth (passwordless) Database : TiDB (MySQL-compatible) Deployment : Manus (built-in hosting) Key Decisions 1. tRPC for End-to-End Type Safety Instead