Built a complete web ecosystem with custom authentication and deep linking for my desktop app

Most developers slap together a landing page and call it done. I built an entire authentication system with Clerk, created custom deep links to authenticate desktop app users directly through Chrome, and added a full API dashboard so users can track their usage and costs in real time. The whole stack runs on Next.js with Shadcn and Framer.

The goal was making something minimal yet functional, which sounds simple until you hit the security nightmares. I fixed major vulnerabilities one by one until I could confidently say this thing is kinda locked down tight. No half-baked auth flows, no exposed endpoints, just clean code that actually protects user data the way it should from day one.