PetFinder
A community platform for reuniting lost pets with their owners: report lost, found or sighted animals, share sightings and message each other directly.
When a pet goes missing, owners usually fall back on paper posters and scattered social-media posts, and people who spot a lost animal rarely know who to tell. Information is spread out, goes stale quickly and is hard to search.
PetFinder brings it together in one place. Owners can post a lost pet, anyone can report a found or sighted animal, and others can add sightings and comments to a post, so a trail of information builds up around each case. People can message each other directly, save posts they want to follow and choose which notifications they get. To keep the barrier low, someone can start helping straight away as a guest, without creating an account, and register later.
The mobile app speaks English, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, picks the language from the device, and keeps showing cached posts when the connection drops. Community reports and an admin moderation dashboard help keep the content trustworthy.
Key features
- Lost, found and sighting posts with photos
- Sightings and comments that build a trail of information on each case
- Direct messaging between users
- Saved posts and notification preferences
- Start as a guest without an account, or sign up with email
- Four languages (English, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian), detected from the device
- Offline-friendly mobile app that falls back to cached posts
- Community reporting and an admin moderation dashboard
Architecture
PetFinder is a complete product with four parts sharing one backend: a Fastify REST API running on Bun with SQLite through Prisma, an Expo React Native mobile app, a Next.js landing page, and a lightweight admin panel served by the API itself. Authentication uses signed tokens, with guest sessions tied to the device installation.