lastseen.city

Overview

lastseen.city started as a Config Makeathon entry: a place to archive memories of places that no longer exist. The core loop is simple - a heatmap of submissions, cached map positions so browsing doesn't hammer the database, and around 190 archive entries seeded in directly through Supabase SQL inserts to get the map feeling alive before a single real visitor showed up.

The Challenge

The technical build was the easy part. The real challenge was distribution: getting the site in front of people who'd actually have a lost place worth submitting, without a marketing budget or an existing audience.

The Approach

I seeded the Reddit communities of a handful of specific cities to reach people likely to have a real memory to contribute, rather than posting broadly and hoping. The visual identity - map textures, atmosphere - came out of Figma Weave, and I published the design system and some of the Make widgets back to the Figma Community afterwards.

Build & Technology

Next.js, Supabase, Figma Weave, Make

Outcome

The reach outran the build: hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of comments on Reddit, with submissions from dozens of countries never directly targeted.

Key Takeaways

• 1. Distribution is a design problem, not an afterthought - seeding the right communities mattered more than any UI decision.
• 2. Caching map positions early avoided a database bottleneck once traffic actually arrived.
• 3. Reusable output (the Figma system, the Make widgets) from a weekend project is worth publishing - it saves rebuilding the same primitives next time.