hskstory.com ↗
HSKStory — Solo-Built AI Learning Platform
One-person startup: product, engineering, design, marketing, SEO — all me.
AI-generated graded Chinese readers across HSK 1–9. The only platform covering advanced levels (7–9)
at half the price of competitors.
- Frontend — Next.js 16, React 19, server components, Tailwind 4. Tap-to-define dictionary (121K entries), FSRS spaced repetition flashcards, inline pinyin with smart mode, 3 reading themes, dynamic OG images
- Backend — FastAPI + SQLAlchemy + Alembic. Passwordless auth, Paddle payments (global VAT), reading progress sync, content import pipeline with SHA256 integrity checks
- AI/NLP — Benchmarked 7 LLMs for story generation. Built custom segmenter pipeline with g2pW BERT polyphonic disambiguation (16K corrections). Self-hosted TTS on rented GPU (Qwen3-TTS). "Best of 2" generation strategy
- DevOps — Hetzner VPS + Cloudflare CDN + R2 storage. Zero-downtime atomic deploys, GitHub Actions CI/CD, Sentry monitoring, Tailscale-only SSH, automated backups
- SEO — 47 content pages, JSON-LD schema markup, dynamic sitemaps, CTR-optimized titles. First-mover on HSK 3.0 (2025 standard, competitors still on 2.0)
- Marketing — 7-platform content strategy, automated TikTok video pipeline (YAML → MP4), cross-posting automation, competitor pricing analysis
Next.js 16
React 19
FastAPI
Python
TypeScript
Tailwind CSS 4
SQLAlchemy
LLM / AI
NLP
TTS
Cloudflare
SEO