Newsmast (UK)
A Decentralized, Mastodon-Powered Social Platform
Company: BinaryLab
Timeline: Nov 2022 – Jul 2023
Client: Newsmast
Market: UK
Status: Live
Summary
Newsmast is a UK-based, decentralized, Mastodon-powered social platform. I worked on API integration and business logic across the product, and led the migration of the front end away from a mixed React + Ruby codebase to a pure React stack — the Ruby half made onboarding new front-end engineers painful since most of the team didn't know Ruby, so consolidating everything into React removed that barrier for good. Built with React, TypeScript, Zustand, Tanstack Query, and Tailwind CSS.
What I Worked On
- API integration with the Mastodon-powered backend.
- Implemented core business logic across the platform.
- Migrated the front end from a mixed React + Ruby codebase to a pure React stack, removing the Ruby dependency so new front-end hires could onboard without learning it.
- State management with Zustand and server-state caching with Tanstack Query, styled with Tailwind CSS.