MoodCast Weather App
Original Poems for Every Weather Condition — and a Load Shedding Mood Card
SheCodes Plus weather app built by a published poet. Original poems for rain, sun, wind, clouds, storms. South Africa's load shedding mood card — candle rituals, battery-saving affirmations, a poem about sitting in the dark. The most-shared feature in testing.
Serving
South African users + SheCodes learners
Market
SheCodes Plus certification
Problem
Standard project → personal creative statement
Result
Load shedding mood card: most-shared feature in testing
What needed solving
Weather apps give you data. What does a published poet build when she gets a weather brief? The standard tutorial project is a brief, not a destination.
How I built it
OpenWeatherMap API + Geolocation API for real-time data. Original poems written for each weather condition. South Africa load shedding mood card — converts national frustration into a moment of care. SheCodes Plus certified.
The SheCodes Plus curriculum required a weather app. The question was: what does a weather app built by a published poet look like? The technical implementation — API key, geolocation, fetch, parse, render — was the fastest part. The real work was the content library: original poems written for each weather condition, self-care rituals matched to each condition, and a South Africa-specific addition that no tutorial suggests — the load shedding mood card. The load shedding card converts what every South African acknowledges as a frustration into a moment of care: candle rituals, battery-saving affirmations, a poem about sitting in the dark. It became the most-shared feature in user testing. The lesson: the standard project is the starting point, not the destination.
What This Taught Me
- 1
SheCodes Plus taught the fundamentals — the project taught the identity
- 2
The load shedding card is a product insight: products that acknowledge SA lived reality earn trust competitors cannot buy
- 3
The standard tutorial project is a brief, not a destination — the question is always: what would make this mine?
- 4
Original content (poems per weather condition) is a moat that technical skill alone cannot replicate
HTML5
Semantic markup — no framework
CSS3
Atmospheric gradients, responsive design
Vanilla JavaScript
API calls, DOM manipulation, geolocation
OpenWeatherMap API
Real-time weather data
Geolocation API
Location-based weather without manual input
# MoodCast Weather App > Original Poems for Every Weather Condition — and a Load Shedding Mood Card ## Project Context **Category:** Web App · API Integration · SheCodes Plus **Status:** Live · 2025 **Author:** Nandawula Regine Kabali-Kagwa — East London, South Africa **Company:** Mirembe Muse (Pty) Ltd · Reg: 2026-005658 ## Stack ``` HTML5 # Semantic markup — no framework CSS3 # Atmospheric gradients, responsive design Vanilla JavaScript # API calls, DOM manipulation, geolocation OpenWeatherMap API # Real-time weather data Geolocation API # Location-based weather without manual input ``` ## Architecture Notes - All data mutations validated server-side via Next.js API routes - Row-Level Security enforced at database level (Supabase) - Mobile-first, PWA-ready, offline-tolerant where connectivity is unreliable - PayFast integration for ZAR-native payments (no USD conversion) - SEO-optimised: metadata, JSON-LD, canonical URLs, sitemap - POPIA compliant — data minimisation + user consent by design ## Environment Variables ```env NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL= NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY= SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY= ANTHROPIC_API_KEY= NEXT_PUBLIC_PAYFAST_MERCHANT_ID= NEXT_PUBLIC_PAYFAST_MERCHANT_KEY= PAYFAST_PASSPHRASE= RESEND_API_KEY= ``` ## Links - Live: https://my-weather-app-rho-lyart.vercel.app/ - GitHub: https://github.com/Nanda-Regine/my-weather-app - Portfolio: https://creativelynanda.co.za/projects/weather-app --- Built from East London, South Africa · Nine months · Zero to production
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