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Yevhen Melnychenko
Yevhen Melnychenko

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Building SVGenius: From Side Project to Community Library

#webdev #ai #sideprojects #buildinpublic

Why I Built This (The Honest Version)

I wasn't trying to solve some massive problem or disrupt an industry. I just thought SVG animations were underutilized on the web, and the barrier to creating them was unnecessarily high.

The Technical Approach

The Stack
Frontend: React + Firebase Auth
Backend: Node.js + Express on Railway
Database: Firestore (for user data + community library)
AI: OpenAI GPT-5, Claude
Deployment: Netlify (frontend) + Railway (backend)

Core Architecture

  1. Text input → LLM processing → SVG output
  2. Community library for sharing animations
  3. Copy-paste workflow (no downloads, no accounts required for basic use)

The interesting challenge was prompt engineering for consistent SVG output. LLMs are great at code generation but terrible at maintaining consistent animation timing and valid XML structure.

Real Numbers from Google Analytics
Launch: 12/08/2025
Traffic Growth

Real Numbers from Admin panel of SVGenius

What I Got Right

  1. Free-First Strategy No paywall on core functionality.
  2. Community Library Users publishing their animations created a flywheel effect. More content → better SEO → more users → more content.
  3. Copy-Paste UX No forced downloads or complex export flows. Generate → copy → paste. Developers appreciate efficiency.

What I Got Wrong

  1. Underestimated Prompt Engineering Complexity Getting consistent SVG output from LLMs is harder than expected. Spent weeks fine-tuning prompts for edge cases.
  2. SEO Was an Afterthought Should have optimized for search from day one. Adding proper meta tags, sitemap, and structured data later was more work.
  3. Analytics Setup Took 2 weeks to properly implement tracking. Lost valuable early user behavior data.
  4. Community Features Users wanted search, filtering, and categories in the library much earlier than I provided them.

Technical Lessons

Performance Matters
Average SVG file size: 0.8KB vs typical loading GIF: 150KB. The performance difference is real and measurable.

AI Consistency is Hard
LLMs are probabilistic. Getting identical output for similar prompts required extensive prompt engineering and output validation.

Community > Features
The library of user-generated content became more valuable than any individual feature I built.

Note: I'm sharing real numbers

Why SVG Animations Matter

This isn't about replacing GIFs (though you could). It's about having another tool in the performance toolkit:

  1. Scalable: Perfect on any screen density
  2. Lightweight: Usually under 1KB
  3. Accessible: Work with screen readers
  4. Customizable: Change colors/timing with CSS
  5. SEO-friendly: Searchable content

Try It Out
Live at: svgenius.design
The tool is free, takes 30 seconds to try, and might solve a problem you didn't know you had.

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