The Garden is a talent showcase platform built for Intentionally Designed Solutions (IDS). The idea: give talented creators a live stage where supporters can react in real time while their work is being featured — more like a concert than a portfolio page.
How it works
Creators publish their work — art, music, writing, design — to their Garden profile. When a piece is featured in a live showcase session, supporters tuned in can send appreciation in real time. Reactions appear on screen as they happen, creating a shared experience rather than asynchronous likes.
Tech stack
The real-time layer is built on Socket.IO running on a Node.js server. When a showcase goes live, all connected supporters join the same Socket.IO room. Reactions and interactions are broadcast to everyone in the room instantly.
Firebase handles everything that doesn’t need to be real-time: creator profiles, work uploads, authentication, and persisting showcase records after they end.
The frontend is SvelteKit, which was a natural fit — Svelte’s reactive model meant wiring up live Socket.IO events to the UI was clean and straightforward, without the boilerplate a heavier framework would have added.
What made this interesting
The challenge was keeping the real-time experience smooth without overloading the server. Throttling reaction events on the client side (so a single user can’t flood the room) and batching Socket.IO emissions were two of the more interesting engineering decisions. The result is a showcase experience that feels genuinely live.