Shelpter

Shelpter is a charitable project helping shelters find new homes for primarily dogs and cats. The goals are to make adoption faster, increase the reach shelters have, speed up the adoption process, and support safer adoptions. The app includes internationalisation so it can serve shelters and adopters in multiple languages.

We built a suitability algorithm that rates how well prospective owners and pets match. It uses the pet’s details and the owner’s details to produce a score—the more complete the profiles, the higher and more confident the rating. That helps shelters prioritise stronger matches and reduce unsuitable placements.

Tech stack: Vercel, Next.js, React, Postgres, Clerk, PostHog, Drizzle, i18n. Vercel handles our deployment and hosting. Clerk and Postgres help keep the platform GDPR compliant; Clerk also keeps authentication secure. Using a relational database keeps our data consistent. We use Drizzle as an ORM—it handles our database migrations as well.