tejas-os

my personal site, live at tejasnaladala.com. a CRT/terminal-themed portfolio i built because my best friend at udub is obsessed with that aesthetic, and it stuck.

it is a Next.js app (App Router, React 19, TypeScript) deployed on Vercel. cream-and-orange palette, monospace type, hairline rules, a few easter eggs.

what's in here

• landing page - a studio portrait card that swaps to an alternate image on hover, a tabbed CV (projects, skills, awards) with morphing headline text, and a technical-identity hero. full content is also rendered in a hidden sr-only block so screen readers and search engines get the whole thing, not just the active tab.
• /work - every project grouped into ventures, research, industry systems, competitions, and open source. pulled from one typed data file (src/data/projects.ts) so the work page, the landing tabs, and the resume never drift apart.
• /thesis - things i currently believe to be true about hardware, startups, and shipping.
• /gallery - photo grid with a keyboard-navigable lightbox (arrows to move, esc to close) and graceful fallbacks for images that fail to load.
• /stories - locked behind an engineering brain teaser. answer it to read.
• /resume - the clean, boring version for people who just want the PDF.

there's a contact form that posts to an API route, plus a generated Open Graph image so links unfurl nicely.

how it works

a few things i actually care about under the hood:

• single source of truth for content. projects, skills, awards, thesis entries, and stories all live as typed objects in src/data/. the pages just render them. no copy-paste between routes.
• contact API that degrades instead of breaking. src/app/api/contact/route.ts validates input with Zod, applies a 5-requests-per-minute-per-IP in-memory rate limit, and sends through Resend. if the API key is missing or the upstream send fails, it returns a mailto fallback so the form never silently eats a message. the key is read from process.env only and is never committed.
• OG image generated at the edge. src/app/api/og/route.tsx builds the 1200x630 social card with next/og instead of shipping a static PNG, so the tagline and stats stay in sync with the rest of the site.
• accessible by default. skip-to-content link, the hidden full-content block behind the tabbed UI, reduced-motion handling, and aria labels on the interactive bits.

stack

Next.js 16, React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS v4, Framer Motion, Zustand, Three.js / Spline, Howler.js, Zod, Resend.

running locally

npm install
npm run dev

opens on localhost:3000.

the contact form needs RESEND_API_KEY in your environment to actually send mail. without it the form still works and falls back to a mailto: link, so you don't need it for local dev. optional overrides: RESEND_FROM, RESEND_TO.

npm run build   # production build
npm run lint    # eslint

deploy

hosted on Vercel. push to master and it deploys, or run npx vercel --prod. set RESEND_API_KEY (and optionally RESEND_FROM / RESEND_TO) in the Vercel project env.

license

MIT. see LICENSE.