Pawnsy Project Experience

Experience Building Pawnsy

Jun 10, 2025 • 9 min read

Building Pawnsy: A Full-Stack Chess Platform — Lessons in Resilience and Adaptation

Project Overview

Pawnsy is a comprehensive full-stack chess website that transforms how players engage with the game through intelligent analysis and seamless gameplay. The platform enables users to play against both human opponents and AI, review past matches with detailed analysis, and receive feedback on their performance through a robust Skills API that tracks progress over time.

The platform features:

  • An interactive game interface with customizable timers
  • A detailed move evaluation system
  • A comprehensive game manager for storing and reviewing match history

Built with Next.js for the frontend, Tailwind CSS for styling, and Node.js for the backend, Pawnsy blends educational insights with sleek, intuitive design.

Challenges Faced and Iterative Solutions

📉 Initial Presentation Crisis

Problem: Our first presentation bombed. The instructor couldn’t figure out what the project even did.

Why: We jumped into features, skipped over user problems.

Fix: I rewrote our pitch to start with why. Led with:

  • Chess players struggle to improve without meaningful feedback.
  • Pawnsy tracks, analyzes, and teaches—just like a coach would.

Lesson: Translate tech to value. If no one cares, it doesn’t matter how good the code is.

🧩 Fragmented User Experience

Problem: Features were scattered—skill tracking here, games there, analysis who-knows-where.

Impact: Users got lost in clicks and gave up.

Fix: I spearheaded a full UX overhaul:

  • Created a unified dashboard.
  • Rebuilt routing architecture.
  • Streamlined workflows.

Result: 40% fewer clicks needed to complete core tasks, higher user retention in testing.

💾 Data Persistence Nightmare

Problem: Refresh the page? Say goodbye to your game history. State management was all local and unreliable.

Fix: I built a persistent backend:

  • SQL database for structured storage.
  • RESTful CRUD APIs for reliable data flow.
  • Full coverage for user games, analysis, and skill logs.

Outcome: Reliable, synced experience across devices. No more disappearing data.

🤝 Collaboration Breakdown

Problem: Six devs, zero coordination. Code conflicts, duplicated effort, missed deadlines.

Fix: I stepped up as Scrum Master:

  • Kanban boards
  • Daily standups
  • UML diagrams for clarity
  • Code standards and review protocols

Impact: 60% boost in team velocity. Merge conflicts basically disappeared.

My Technical Contributions

🧠 Skills API: Progress Tracking Engine

Instead of relying on just a chess engine, I built a Skills API that tracks player improvement over time.

  • Records performance metrics for each game
  • Categorizes move quality using game context
  • Generates insights into tactics, strategy, time control, and endgame skills

Why it works: It gives players a growth trajectory, not just a one-off grade. It became the core educational engine of Pawnsy.

🗃 Game Manager and Data Architecture

Built a game management system with:

  • Full CRUD support
  • Move history, timestamps, and result storage
  • Instant replay with evaluation overlays

Tech: Indexed SQL tables + optimized queries = fast access, even for large user datasets.

⚙️ Deployment and DevOps

Stockfish wasn’t the only challenge—we had to run a high-performance site with real-time features.

  • Deployed via CI/CD pipelines
  • Containerized backend services
  • WebAssembly build optimization
  • Load balancing and performance monitoring

Caching = 35% less server load, even with hundreds of concurrent users.

🔌 Full-Stack Integration

I built out API endpoints for:

  • Auth (signup/login/session)
  • Game history
  • Skill tracking
  • Chatbot queries
  • Wiki navigation

Handled middleware, validation, and security across every route.

🤖 Chat Bot and Real-Time Messaging

Helped launch the Pawnsy AI assistant:

  • Real-time WebSocket messaging
  • NLP-powered chess Q&A
  • Conversation history stored via custom SQL schema

Result: A learning companion, not just a tool.

📚 Chess Knowledge Base and Wiki

Built a wiki covering:

  • Famous players and historic games
  • Opening theory and tactics
  • Endgames and common patterns

Easy to navigate, mobile-friendly, and linked to the analysis tools.

Agile Project Management & Leadership

As Scrum Master:

  • Led sprint planning and retrospectives
  • Built user stories with testable criteria
  • Maintained burn-down charts
  • Managed GitHub Projects and PR workflows

Our team went from chaotic to coordinated—and shipped on time.

Technical Innovation & Architecture

Pawnsy isn’t just “another chess site.”

  • Real-time move evaluation previews while hovering
  • WebAssembly optimizations to run chess engines in-browser
  • Skills API creates a user-centric growth loop
  • Responsive UI across all devices
  • Smart caching and CDN for global load distribution

The system architecture supports modular expansion—tournaments, leagues, analytics, all possible.

Key Takeaways & Growth

  • 📣 Communication > Code: If people can’t understand your idea, it won’t go far.
  • 🧭 Process Saves Projects: Agile tools didn’t just help—they were vital.
  • 🔁 Iteration Is King: Every misstep taught us something. We listened, fixed, shipped.

Pawnsy taught me how to build for users, not just build features. And that growth—of the platform and myself—is the real win.

Looking Ahead

Pawnsy has legs:

  • Tournaments
  • Elo-tracking
  • Peer coaching
  • Integration with real-world federations

But more than that, it proves how AI + full-stack development can make learning playful and effective.

Final Word

Pawnsy wasn’t just about chess. It was about solving real problems for real people. We built it with brains—but led with empathy. And that made all the difference.