Week 7 from 40 – Making AI Features Feel Real

Source: Dev.to

Objective of the week

Moving from simple coding practices to making first ideas real by creating a page to publish feral cat sightings. I moved from isolated sightings to identity and relationships by introducing a first version of same‑cat matching.
The goal was not accurate identification, but to learn how to suggest possible matches using simple, explainable logic based on text descriptions and locations.

I extended CatAtlas with a “same‑cat matching v0” feature. Each cat sighting can now:

• trigger a matching process,
• receive a ranked list of possible matches, and
• display simple explanations for why two sightings might refer to the same cat.

This turns the app from a list of entries into an emerging network of related sightings.

GitHub repo:
https://github.com/codespaces?repository_id=1122410808

Live site:
https://orange-disco-pj4g9w4w46prh96pw-5173.app.github.dev/

Designing similarity‑based matching instead of binary identification

• Working with arrays of objects to compute scores and rankings
• Introducing explainable “reasons” for AI‑like decisions
• Managing additional per‑item UI state in React
• Thinking in terms of relationships between records, not just records themselves

What was hard / surprising

• Deciding where matching logic belongs (backend vs. frontend)
• Tuning similarity thresholds so results feel useful, not noisy
• Placing derived UI blocks correctly inside React list rendering
• Realizing how quickly complexity grows once entities relate to each other

What I’ll do next week

Next week, I want to strengthen the CatAtlas foundation further by introducing a new dimension of data, such as photos or a more explicit “cat identity” concept. The focus will be on adding structure carefully, without jumping too early into heavy AI or computer vision.