Overview
Site Mechanic is a website-diagnostics platform: enter any URL and it runs a coordinated scan across SEO, performance, accessibility, security, and typography, then distills the results into a single weighted score with prioritized fixes. Nine months of continuous development took it from first commit to a live, monetized product.
How It Works
The scanning engine coordinates ten analyzers — font discovery, Lighthouse desktop and mobile audits with Core Web Vitals, best practices, WCAG accessibility, font licensing, cross-browser checks, real-user monitoring, and competitive benchmarking — built on Puppeteer, Playwright, and Lighthouse. Scan progress streams to the browser over Socket.IO, and finished reports export to PDF.
The AI Layer
A Pro-gated feature sends scan results to Anthropic's Claude, which returns plain-language advice targeted at the site's weakest areas. Claude also powers font-pairing analysis. The AI layer is feature-flagged and degrades gracefully without an API key. An admin panel tracks per-model AI spend with a configurable model picker (Haiku for cost, Sonnet as default, Opus for depth).
Engineering Highlights
- Server-side entitlements system gating features by plan, backed by Stripe subscriptions, day passes, and one-off report purchases
- SQLite-to-PostgreSQL migration executed mid-flight with parallel test suites for both engines
- Kubernetes deployment manifests with autoscaling and network policies, Prometheus metrics, and GitHub Actions CI/CD
- Custom i18n layer across eight locales in dependency-light vanilla JS, no frontend framework
Outcome
A live, revenue-ready SaaS with 190+ commits: an AI-augmented product carried from idea through architecture, hardening, and operations.
