Before FlexMesh the owner wrote backend only. The marketing site — 123 commits, every one his — is the record of the axis being built in public:
- Week one (2025-05-16..20): Next.js app from scratch, i18n wired, DeepL translation pipeline, animations, "I'll call this 1st version" on day two. The commit subjects are a learning diary ("feat: I like animation", "fix: little joe goes outta box 2").
- The production-hardening saga (2025-09-02..03): a two-day streak fixing what only real deployments teach —
DYNAMIC_SERVER_USAGEerrors under SSR, static metadata generation, Node 20 for OpenSSL compatibility, runtime-vs-build-time credentials. Backend instincts (env discipline, defensive logging) visibly transplanted into a frontend stack. - Framework churn survived: Next.js 15 viewport/metadata migration, React CVE patch (2026-01), Node version pinning — the unglamorous maintenance that distinguishes a shipped site from a demo.
- The craft layer arrived last: Tailwind typography, skeleton loading states, dynamic OG images (2026-03), and finally a full design-system replacement in one day (2026-07-09, High-Vis Workwear import) — by then the axis was strong enough to re-skin the whole site without fear.
Interview archetype: "have you worked outside your specialty?" — I shipped and operated a six-locale production frontend for 14 months, starting from zero, and the git log shows the axis growing commit by commit.