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Route Zero

Pokémon TCG Collection & Deck-Building Toolkit

Route Zero is a full-stack web app for Pokémon TCG collectors: search the live card catalog, track a private binder and wishlist, estimate collection value, and build decks only from cards you actually own.

Duration
~1 week (Jul 2026)
Team Size
Solo project
View Live Site

The live app is public; the source repository is private.

The Problem

Collectors juggle binders, wishlists, and deck lists across spreadsheets or apps that don’t connect "what I own" to "what I can put in a deck" — and third-party card APIs make naive browsing expensive.

The Solution

Route Zero is a private binder: search the official-style catalog, track owned cards and a wishlist, see set progress and estimated market value, and build decks only from inventory.

The Results

Shipped a deployable, multi-route product — auth, search, collection, wishlist, decks, theming, and value tracking — shaped by real engineering constraints: third-party rate limits, hydrating external card IDs on read, and progressive, streamed UX so the app stays responsive even when the catalog API is slow.

Technology Stack

SvelteKit 2 + Svelte 5 (Runes)TypeScriptVitePrisma 7 + PostgreSQL (Supabase)better-authPokémon TCG API v2Tailwind CSS v4shadcn-svelte + bits-uiVercel (adapter-vercel)

My Role & Contributions

Sole builder — designed and shipped the full product end-to-end over one focused week, following a real product loop: auth → search → collection → decks, then hardening. Built email/password auth and Vercel hosting, live catalog search with series/set filtering, streamed SSR with skeleton loading so the shell paints while the catalog fetches, a collection binder with quantity controls and set-completion tracking, a wishlist that "obtains" cards into the binder, owned-only deck building, and a light/dark/system theme. Later hardened the app against real-world constraints: evaluated alternate pricing APIs after rate limits killed hobby-tier plans, added in-memory caching (cards ~1 hour, sets ~6 hours), switched search to fire only on user query instead of free browsing, and added orphan-record cleanup when the upstream provider changed its card ID scheme.

Key Technical Decisions

  • Store IDs, hydrate later — the database holds card IDs only; full card data is fetched from the API on read (batched and cached).
  • In-memory caching — cards cached ~1 hour, sets ~6 hours, to cut repeat API calls.
  • Streaming SSR — collection/search routes return promises; the UI renders with {#await} blocks and skeletons instead of blocking on slow third-party responses.
  • Slim pricing — stores a single marketPrice per card instead of bulky TCGPlayer price blobs.
  • Owned-only decks — deck quantity for a card can never exceed the quantity actually owned.
  • Binder progress — set-completion percentage is computed from official set totals versus unique owned cards.
  • Serverless-friendly Prisma — small connection pool with TLS, tuned for hosted Postgres in a serverless deployment.

Project Showcase

Take a closer look at the key features and interface design of the application.

Route Zero collection binder with set filters and estimated market value
Collection binder — quantity controls, set filters, and estimated market value

Interested in Working Together?

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