# Xinjiang Shao - Personal Website

> Personal website of Xinjiang Shao — Principal Engineer at The Aspen Group (a $4B healthcare group), Chicago. Five in-depth case studies, 30+ technical blog posts, talks, a podcast, and interactive apps on platform architecture, engineering leadership, and AI engineering.

## About Xinjiang Shao

Xinjiang is a Principal Engineer at The Aspen Group (TAG), a $4B healthcare organization with five brands and 1,400+ locations across 48 states: Aspen Dental, ClearChoice Dental Implants, WellNow Urgent Care, Lovet Pet Health Care, and Chapter Aesthetic Studio. He leads front-end and platform architecture across the brands and a 30+ engineer organization as lead of all technical leaders — driving the shared-package re-platforming, an Auth0 + MFA identity platform, MCP work in the web space, and observability standards (Sentry, Grafana, OpenTelemetry). He joined TAG in 2023 as Lead Software Engineer, grew the team from fewer than 5 engineers, and was promoted to Principal Engineer in December 2024.

Previously he was Principal Software Engineer at Peapod Digital Labs (now Ahold Delhaize USA) and Senior Software Engineer at Peapod (2017–2023), where he architected the GraphQL middleware for PRISM, the white-label grocery platform serving 20M+ weekly shoppers across Stop & Shop, Food Lion, Giant Food, GIANT, Hannaford, Martin's and Peapod, and helped grow the front-end org from 10 to 40+ engineers. Earlier (2011–2016) he was a Full Stack Software Engineer at EXACT Sports, building PrepHero, a camp-registration and athletic-recruiting platform, from zero. In 2026 he designed, built, and shipped GroceryTrack (https://grocerytrack.food), an AI-powered grocery receipt scanner for web, iOS, and Android, as a solo indie product.

Education: MS in Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago; BS in Information and Computing Science, Dalian Polytechnic University.

When not coding, enjoys reading, writing, cooking creatively, running regularly, and swimming (started in 2024). Shares thoughts and experiences through this website.

Contact: hi [at] xinjiangshao [dot] com

## Case Studies

Five in-depth case studies at `/case-study`, in order:

- **Digital Commerce** (`/case-study/digital-commerce`) - A multi-year patient-facing commerce program for a $4B healthcare organization: five brands and 1,400+ locations re-platformed from six legacy stacks onto per-brand Next.js apps sharing monorepo packages, a GraphQL gateway with Redis, Kubernetes-based promotion pipelines, then fraud detection for appointment booking, intelligent scheduling, CMS 2.0, and an Auth0 + Twilio Verify identity platform with MFA.
- **PRISM** (`/case-study/prism`) - A white-label grocery eCommerce engine at Peapod Digital Labs / Ahold Delhaize USA (2019–2023): six store brands plus Peapod consolidated onto one omnichannel platform serving 20M+ weekly shoppers, a strangler migration off Oracle ATG, AngularJS → Vue → Nuxt micro-frontends, native mobile apps on a GraphQL gateway, and a frontend org that grew from 10 people to 40+ engineers across four product pillars.
- **GroceryTrack** (`/case-study/grocerytrack`) - An AI receipt scanner designed, built, and shipped solo: a working web MVP in a single day, the iOS app in the App Store ~1.5 months later, then Android on Google Play. Flutter + Next.js + Firebase, with Gemini's multimodal API as the parsing engine and an MCP server for AI assistants. 1,245 receipts, 12,376 items and $92K of spend parsed for 270 registered users in the first 7 months (as of October 8, 2026). The case study includes iOS and Android demo videos.
- **Phoenix** (`/case-study/phoenix`) - This very site, rebuilt from a static Hugo blog into an AI-native Next.js 16 platform: React Server Components, three AI providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google) behind one Vercel AI SDK integration, full English/Chinese localization, and 15+ interactive apps and tools.
- **PrepHero** (`/case-study/prephero`) - A recruiting platform built from zero at EXACT Sports (2011–2016), connecting high-school athletes with college coaches through profiles, camp registration, recruiting tools, and Stripe-backed payments.

## Blog Posts

### 2026

- [Building an Identity Platform for a $4B Healthcare Organization](content/blog/2026-08-21-building-an-identity-platform-for-a-4b-healthcare-organization/index.mdx) - Replacing magic links and fuzzy patient matching with Auth0 + Twilio Verify MFA across a large estate of microservices and GraphQL gateways
- [Product Bets and the Reflection of Engineering Inside a Product Org](content/blog/2026-07-25-product-bets-and-the-reflection-of-engineering-inside-a-product-org/index.mdx) - Notes from a three-day Product Summit: top-down vs bottom-up bets, uneven AI adoption, and engineering's job as translator
- [The Engineer Becomes the Editor](content/blog/2026-06-22-the-engineer-becomes-the-editor/index.mdx) - Building a three-platform AI product solo for $725 of tooling and under $45/month to run
- [Building GroceryTrack: From a Pile of Receipts to Users I Never Expected](content/blog/2026-06-12-building-grocerytrack/index.mdx) - From idea to a live receipt-scanning app in one day, and what 444 receipts taught me
- [生活指南之美国医疗系统 (2026版)](content/blog/2026-02-18-american-health-care-explained/index.md) - 深入解析美国医疗系统结构、保险术语及就医流程 (Chinese)
- [Share Packages, Not Applications](content/blog/2026-02-14-share-packages-not-applications/index.mdx) - Three years modernizing a multi-brand healthcare platform: monorepos, GraphQL gateways, and why sharing packages beats sharing apps
- [My 2025 Reflection: A Year of AI, Exploration, and Growth](content/blog/2026-01-08-my-2025-reflection/index.md) - Year-end reflection
- [Chasing Stories Across the British Isles](content/blog/2026-01-02-uk-and-ireland-trip-2025/index.md) - A winter journey through the UK and Ireland

### 2025

- [The Toolbox For Principal Software Engineers](content/blog/2025-10-05-the-toolbox-for-principal-software-engineers/index.md) - Building systems, patterns, and clarity in a multi-brand environment
- [The Field Guide for Learning Swimming as an Adult](content/blog/2025-09-13-the-field-guide-for-learning-swimming-as-an-adult/index.md) - From zero laps to 1000 yards: a practical guide
- [Why Re-Platforming Matters](content/blog/2025-09-11-why-re-platforming-matters/index.md) - When, why, and how organizations should approach re-platforming
- [Leading Without Authority as an Individual Contributor](content/blog/2025-08-17-leading-without-authority-for-an-individual-contributor-leader/index.md) - Leadership strategies for ICs

### 2022

- [Takeaways from GraphQL Summit 2022](content/blog/takeaways-from-graphql-summit-2022/index.md) - 22 talks on federation, supergraphs and schema design, and which were worth the time
- [Bye 2021, Hello 2022](content/blog/2022-01-15-bye-2021-hello-2022/index.md) - Year-end reflection and goals

### 2021

- [SEO: The Secret Sauce for Making Online Grocery Shopping Popular](content/blog/2021-11-8-seo-the-secret-sauce-for-making-online-grocery-shopping-popular/index.md) - Search optimization strategies
- [20年英语语言学习的点滴体验](content/blog/2021-01-24-two-decades-learning-experience-on-english/index.md) - 二十年英语学习历程回顾 (Chinese)
- [关于工作压力的一点想法](content/blog/2021-01-11-related-to-work-stress/index.md) - 工作压力与心理健康的思考 (Chinese)

### 2017–2018

- [Order Status: The Long Awaited Feature](content/blog/2018-01-24_order-status-the-long-awaited-feature/index.md) - E-commerce UX improvements
- [2017 Year At A Glance](content/blog/2018-01-02_2017-year-at-a-glance/index.md) - Professional development review
- [When The Night Is Falling, We Need The Dark Theme](content/blog/2017-10-16_when-the-night-is-falling-we-need-the-dark-theme/index.md) - UI/UX design considerations
- [What Are The Two Hard Things In Computer Science](content/blog/2017-08-21_what-are-the-two-hard-things-in-computer-science/index.md) - Software engineering challenges
- [TD or Not TD, That Is the Question](content/blog/2017-08-07_td-or-not-td-that-is-the-question/index.md) - Technical debt analysis
- [Not So Brief Landing Page History of Peapod](content/blog/2017-07-31_notsobrief-landing-page-history-of-peapod/index.md) - E-commerce evolution case study
- [Web Accessibility: Designing The User Experience With All Users In Mind](content/blog/2017-07-24_web-accessibility-designing-the-user-experience-with-all-users-in-mind/index.md) - Inclusive design practices
- [Cooking & Coding](content/blog/2017-02-12_cooking-coding/index.md) - Parallels between cooking and programming

### 2015–2016

- [Why Scala Can Help You To Build A More Reliable Service](content/blog/2016-02-03_why-scala-can-help-you-to-build-a-more-reliable-service/index.md) - Programming language analysis
- [Printable, Shareable and Responsive Design of Certificate](content/blog/2015-11-21_printable-shareable-and-responsive-design-of-certificate/index.md) - Web-to-print solutions
- [HowdyBarber: A Scripting Way To Check My Barber's Availability](content/blog/2015-10-12_howdybarber-a-scripting-way-to-check-my-barbers-availability/index.md) - Automation and web scraping
- [How I Used Docker for LaTeX on macOS](content/blog/2015-08-14_how-i-used-docker-for-latex-on-macos-yosemitesierra/index.md) - Development environment setup

## Talks

### Conference Presentations

- [The Superpowers and Kryptonite Brought by Next.js](content/talk/2024-09-22-the-superpowers-and-kryptonite-brought-by-nextjs/index.md) - Next.js framework analysis and best practices

## Interactive Apps & Demos

- **Technology Radar** (`/demos/technology-radar`) - Interactive technology radar inspired by Thoughtworks, showing adopted, trialed, and assessed technologies
- **My Life in Weeks** (`/demos/my-life-in-weeks`) - Visual representation of life in weeks, inspired by Tim Urban's "Your Life in Weeks"
- **Blog Word Cloud** (`/demos/blog-word-cloud`) - Interactive word cloud visualization of blog post content with sentiment analysis
- **Car Dashboard** (`/apps/car-dashboard`) - OAuth-gated Tesla dashboard pulling live vehicle data (sign-in required)

## Developer Tools

- **JSON Lint** (`/tool/jsonlint`) - JSON validation and formatting
- **Language Translator** (`/tool/language-translator`) - AI-powered translation utility
- **Markdown Preview** (`/tool/markdown-preview`) - Live Markdown rendering

## Pages

- **Case Studies** (`/case-study`) - Five in-depth case studies (Digital Commerce, PRISM, GroceryTrack, Phoenix, PrepHero)
- **Blog** (`/blog`) - All blog posts organized by year
- **Talks** (`/talk`) - Conference presentations and submissions
- **Podcast** (`/podcast`) - Podcast episodes
- **Photography** (`/photography`) - Photography galleries
- **Apps** (`/apps`) - Interactive apps and data visualizations
- **Tools** (`/tool`) - Developer utilities
- **Demos** (`/demos`) - Interactive demos and data visualizations
- **Uses** (`/uses`) - Hardware, software, and tools used for development
- **Archive** (`/archive`) - Open source projects and case studies
- **Resume** (`/resume`) - Professional resume
- **About** (`/about`) - Comprehensive background, experience, and interests
- **Search** (`/search`) - Keyword and conversational (AI) search across all content

## Technical Stack

- **Framework**: Next.js 16 with App Router and React 19
- **Language**: TypeScript
- **Styling**: Tailwind CSS 4 with custom orange brand theme
- **AI Integration**: Vercel AI SDK — Anthropic Claude for the conversational assistant, Google Gemini for content summaries and translation, OpenAI for text-to-speech
- **Audio**: OpenAI Text-to-Speech API for blog post audio generation (the "Think Inside of the Box" podcast)
- **Translation**: Google Translate API + AI-powered translation via Gemini
- **Authentication**: Firebase Auth with Google Sign-In
- **Content**: Markdown with gray-matter frontmatter processing
- **Internationalization**: next-intl (English and Chinese)
- **Diagrams**: Mermaid.js with interactive modal zoom
- **Feature Flags**: LaunchDarkly
- **Error Tracking**: Sentry
- **Testing**: Vitest for unit tests, Playwright for E2E
- **Package Manager**: pnpm
- **Deployment**: Firebase App Hosting

## AI Assistant Features

The website includes an AI-powered conversational search assistant:
- **Integration**: Anthropic Claude via the Vercel AI SDK, with tool calling over the site's content
- **Rate Limiting**: 20 questions per day per visitor
- **Focus**: Factual information about website content and Xinjiang's professional background
- **Context**: Maintains conversation context and provides relevant responses
- **Safety**: Guardrails to keep conversations on-topic and professional

## API Endpoints

- **Chat API** (`/api/chat`) - Conversational assistant powered by Anthropic Claude
- **Content Summary** (`/api/content-summary`) - AI-powered content summarization (Gemini 2.5 Flash)
- **Newsletter** (`/api/newsletter/subscribe`) - Email newsletter subscription via Buttondown
- **Translation Services**:
  - `/api/translate` - AI-powered translation using Gemini
  - `/api/translate-google` - Google Translate API integration
- **Blog Audio** (`/api/blog/[slug]/audio`) - OpenAI TTS-generated audio for blog posts
- **Environment Access** (`/api/environment-access`) - Server-side environment gate verification
- **Sitemap** (`/api/sitemap`) - Dynamic sitemap generation
- **Info** (`/api/info`) - Application information and health check

## Content Organization

All content is organized as Markdown files with frontmatter metadata including title, date, author, tags, and descriptions. Blog posts and talks are stored in individual directories with supporting assets (images, PDFs, etc.) co-located with the content files. The site supports both English and Chinese content with locale-specific posts.

## Contact & Social

- **Email**: hi@xinjiangshao.com
- **Website**: https://xinjiangshao.com
- **GitHub**: https://github.com/soleo
- **X / Twitter**: https://x.com/soleoshao
- **LinkedIn**: https://linkedin.com/in/xinjiangshao
- **YouTube**: https://youtube.com/@soleoshao
- **Instagram**: https://instagram.com/soleoshao

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*This website showcases Xinjiang Shao's professional journey through software engineering — from a zero-to-one sports-tech platform, to grocery eCommerce at 20M+ weekly shoppers, to platform and identity architecture for a $4B healthcare organization — with first-hand writing on engineering leadership, platform architecture, and AI-native product building.*