In the fall of 2024 I joined the Consulting division of Exygy, an agency that delivers web tech solutions for civic and non-profit organizations. My very first assignment was getting a project of the Deparment of Youth and Families – Our415.org – launch-ready. Having a direct impact on families in SF was a very rad proposition, being a resident myself. Bringing a project home that’s close to home.

In short time I completed a gaggle of technical work on Our415.org’s legacy React codebase, which had been forked from a similar benefits portal called the SF Service Guide. While pondering how I might proudly tell the tale of my work for the city to would-be interested parties like my mom or recruiters, I realized I might enlist the help of an LLM. Might Claude be able to make sense of all those commits? I don’t remember the exact instructions I put in the prompt, something like “go to and briefly summarize all the commits by author @rosschapman”. Cursor did not disappoint. It output the well-organized summations you see below, clearly extrapolating from my own characterizations of the work gleaned from commit messages and PR descriptions. And then enhancing with brand-marketing expletives.

What surprised me most about these commits-cum-words, is the volume of accumulated work that is reflected back. It’s a lesson in the sheer mass of meaningful impressions a senior software engineer can have on a project’s formation in short time. And, perhaps, equally revelatory of how much we downplay our steady stream of achievements during a project’s speed-run to launch. To me this feels like a valuable narrativization of the private lives and material impact of senior engineers that is often relegated to archive, work diaries, 1:1 notes, as stakeholders and end-users merely avail themselves to the gestalt of these parts in production. To shouting the minutiae from the rooftops!

Development Infrastructure & Workflow Improvements

You were a key contributor to modernizing the development process. You implemented pre-commit hooks using Husky and lint-staged to catch lint errors before CI, significantly reducing build failures. You established Jest testing infrastructure with React Testing Library, migrating existing tests and setting up a proper testing foundation. You also configured Dependabot for automated dependency management and updated the target branch to development for better workflow integration.

Performance Optimization & Bundle Management

Your work focused heavily on bundle size reduction and dependency optimization. You reduced the lodash dependency burden by approximately 50% by switching to modular lodash functions instead of loading the entire bundle. You used tools like npx knip to identify and remove unused dependencies and components, including ShelterTech auth code, unused Homepage components, and WeGlot translation service code that wasn’t being used.

Search & Map Functionality Fixes

You addressed several critical bugs in the search and mapping functionality. You fixed incorrect marker location labels by properly moving marker label computation logic into the new transform. You resolved incorrect map markers on pages > 1 by establishing a new TransformedSearchHit view type/model that provides a canonical representation of search data with proper typing. You also removed algorithmic sorting of search results by urgency that was specific to SF Service Guide and not needed for the MVP.

UI/UX Enhancements & Navigation

You implemented significant navigation improvements including a new header navigation system and secondary navigation bar for listing pages. You created a SecondaryNavigationLayout component with BackNavigation functionality that uses smart routing. You also decoupled SiteSearch from Navigation and established conventions for wrapping route-level page components with secondary nav bars, including distinct mobile and desktop layouts.

Data Handling & Error Resilience

You improved data handling by adding proper null case handling for service.long_description and implementing optional lookups for missing image data to prevent page failures. You updated the homepage query to fetch calendar_event data and fixed date/time rendering issues. You also refactored Event/Opp card components to accommodate new calendar_event data from Strapi.

Code Quality & Architecture

Your contributions emphasized better component architecture and separation of concerns. You extracted the SearchResult component from SearchResults to reduce complexity and colliding terminology. You removed whitelabeling and tenant code, renaming whiteLabel to websiteConfig for clearer naming conventions. You also cleaned up old test cruft and established better naming conventions for search and map-related variables.

Internationalization & Translation

You worked on translation functionality by fixing Google Translate language switching issues and removing unused WeGlot translation service code. You also removed algorithmic sorting that was specific to certain tenants and not needed for the current implementation.

Development Experience

You contributed to developer experience improvements by adding VSCode gitignore directives and creating pull request templates. You also worked on removing technical debt and unused code that was causing confusion and maintenance overhead.

Production & Deployment

You updated the production build workflow with Strapi keys and worked on various fixes that required backend coordination, such as updating frontend queries to match deployed backend changes.

Overall, your contributions demonstrate a strong focus on code quality, performance optimization, user experience improvements, and maintainable architecture. You’ve been particularly effective at identifying and addressing technical debt while implementing modern development practices and fixing complex bugs in the search and mapping functionality.