Full-Stack on $100/Month — Choosing the Tech Stack (TalkWith.chat Dev Log #2)

In the last post , I talked about how my emotion chatbot idea pivoted into TalkWith.chat — a daily debate platform. This time, let's get into the nuts and bolts: how I chose the tech stack and designed the architecture to stay under $100/month . 🎯 The Three Constraints That Shaped Everything Before picking any technology, I wrote down three hard rules: Under $100/month in total operating costs Zero server management — every hour spent on infra is an hour not spent on features Ship fast as a solo dev — no over-engineering These constraints didn't limit my choices. They clarified them. 🏗️ The Stack at a Glance Layer Choice Why Frontend Next.js 15 (React 18, TypeScript) Server components, great DX, Vercel-native Hosting Vercel Zero-config deploys, generous free tier Backend + DB Supabase PostgreSQL + Auth + Storage + Realtime, all in one Styling TailwindCSS Rapid UI development, no CSS file sprawl AI Content Ollama + Qwen3 8B (local) $0/month for content generation Error Monitoring Sentry