With infrastructure and a clear PRD in place, the author treated the third day of the portfolio project as a dedicated engineering sprint rather than a quick UI hack. The primary aim of Phase‑2 was to lay a frontend architecture that could grow without costly rewrites. Starting point was a Vite + React scaffold, chosen for its lightning‑fast dev server and minimal config.

A separate frontend/ directory kept the client side isolated from any backend code, mirroring how larger teams structure monorepos. Core tooling arrived early: Tailwind CSS for utility‑first styling, React Router DOM to map navigation before pages existed, and ESLint plus Prettier to lock code style. The folder layout—src/components, src/pages, src/hooks, src/data, src/services, src/styles, src/contexts—clarified where UI, logic, and data belong.

Hooks abstracted data fetching, while a services layer centralized API calls, preparing the app for future backend integration. Content lives in JSON files under data, acting as a temporary backend. By the end of the week the codebase was scalable, predictable, and ready for Phase‑3 backend work, demonstrating that disciplined setup outweighs early visual polish.