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GadgetDropLive

May 2026 – Present

A live product-review and price-tracking site with AI-written buy-or-wait verdicts.

LaravelPHPLivewireReact / InertiaMySQLTailwind CSSClaude APIMCP
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GadgetDrop is a live product-review and price-tracking site at gadgetdrop.tech. Every review carries a 90-day price history, a deal verdict that says whether to buy now or wait, and price-drop email alerts readers can subscribe to. Eleven scheduled jobs keep the prices, verdicts, and alerts current without anyone touching them.

AI integration

The Claude API streams an explanation of each buy-or-wait verdict onto the page as it's generated. Every call runs under a daily budget, a rate limit, and a cache, so a traffic spike can't run up the bill or hammer the API. An MCP server exposes the same product and price data to AI agents.

Architecture

The public site started as React with Inertia. I moved it to server-rendered Blade and Livewire so search engines see complete pages, with the H1, meta tags, and structured data all present with JavaScript turned off. The admin area stays a React app. Both sides share one Laravel backend and a single Vite build with dual entries.

Engineering proof

  • 650+ PHPUnit tests
  • Laravel Dusk and Cypress end-to-end tests
  • GitHub Actions CI on every push
  • A one-command deploy script

Where it started

GadgetDrop was my first project built with Claude Code. I wanted to find the limits of AI-assisted development and learn firsthand where it shines and where it falls apart. The site also doubles as an SEO lab: I'm experimenting with JSON-LD structured data for products, merchandise, and brands, and learning Google's ad policies and approval process along the way. It's an ongoing process, with big shifts as I learn new things.

Tech stack

  • Backend: Laravel 13, PHP 8.4
  • Public frontend: Blade (SSR) with Livewire 4 and Alpine.js
  • Admin frontend: React 18 with Inertia.js v2
  • Styling: Tailwind CSS v3
  • AI: Claude API for streamed verdict explanations, plus an MCP server for agents
  • Markdown: league/commonmark, rendered server-side
  • Build: Vite 8 with dual entries
  • Database: MySQL 8.4
  • Auth: Laravel Breeze
  • Testing: PHPUnit, Laravel Dusk, Cypress
  • CI/CD: GitHub Actions and a one-command deploy script

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