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Case Studies / PickleNudge

PickleNudge: a compatibility-scored matching engine, shipped in weeks

A pickleball partner matcher built around a deep player profile and a real 0 to 100 compatibility score, taken from idea to a live product quickly on Corvidae's standard MVP process.

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Problem

Pickleball players struggle to find partners who actually match how they play, not just players who happen to be nearby. PickleNudge needed a deep player profile and a genuine compatibility score, not a simple location-based list.

Architecture

Frontend

A React PWA built with Vite, plus an Astro marketing site.

API

A .NET 10 API backed by Postgres.

Database

PostgreSQL.

Infrastructure

CI builds all three images (site, app, API) and deploys via SSH to the shared Auckland EC2 instance, with the apex domain serving the marketing site, app serving the PWA and api serving the API.

AI components

A 0-100 compatibility scoring and matching engine that weighs skill, tactics, schedule, goals and mindset, with complementarity bonuses for factors such as court side and role.

Engineering decisions

  • A nudge-to-reveal, accept-to-chat flow keeps compatibility scores and full profiles hidden until both players opt in, rather than exposing every profile to every other user.
  • Passwordless magic-link sign-in removes a password from onboarding entirely.
  • The product went from idea to a live matching engine in weeks by reusing the same infrastructure pattern and product base already proven across the fleet.

Challenges

  • Migrating the product and its player data cleanly from an earlier temporary home on attendro.com to its own picklenudge.com domain and database.
  • Designing a compatibility score that rewards complementary traits, such as opposite court-side preference, rather than simple similarity matching.
  • Building presence indicators and read receipts for in-app chat without over-engineering a full messaging platform.

Outcome

  • Live in production at picklenudge.com, app.picklenudge.com and api.picklenudge.com with a valid TLS certificate.
  • Migrated cleanly from attendro.com in 2026 with player data intact.
  • Runs as a free product on the same infrastructure pattern used across the rest of the Corvidae fleet.

Services demonstrated

MVP and Product Development Custom Software Development Cloud and DevOps

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