Why
In Korea the new year comes with deokdam, short wishes exchanged between people who care about each other. Greetings sent over KakaoTalk are buried within days, and few people make time to look back on the year. DeokDam Pocket gives that ritual a place online: a group, a pocket of messages, and a moment to look back before looking forward.
What I built
- Groups. Share greetings only with a chosen circle; one link invites everyone.
- Pockets. Write greetings, collect them, and open them again in the new year.
- Review and resolutions. Prompts for looking back on the year and writing plans for the next.
- Talk to future me. An AI conversation seeded from your own reflections.
How I built it
Built solo with Next.js, TypeScript and PostgreSQL, launched for the 2024 new year. Traffic concentrates in the few days around New Year's Day, so the stack stayed deliberately simple and the service was reopened and checked each December rather than kept hot year-round.
Outcome
Opened for the 2024 and 2025 new years and closed in January 2026. A full loop, from designing a service for a short burst of use to shutting it down, done alone.