A stalled frontend shell became a live product that sells records reports
A criminal record search returns a real person's name. Get it wrong and you've attached someone else's record to them, that's not a bug, it's defamation risk. Every batch here is checked against the state's own document counts before it goes live, which is exactly how a quiet data error that would have mislabeled real people got caught instead.
The project arrived half-abandoned: a frontend shell with no working search, no payments, no accounts, and no real records behind it. The raw material was there, in official Washington State prison PDFs, but nothing could read them, search them, or sell them.
What I built.
I built the rest of the product. Anyone can search a Washington State prison record for free, by name or number, and see a preview. Paying $29.99 unlocks the full phone-call or visitor report instantly. Behind it, a pipeline reads the official records PDFs, including scanned pages, and turns them into a searchable database, checking its own work against each PDF's own page counts. A full security pass found and fixed 21 holes, including one that would have let any signed-in user unlock every paid report for free. Live at inmateinsights.com.
How it runs.
Official DOC records PDFs
Pipeline reads them, even scanned pages
Checked against the PDF's own counts
Searchable database
Free blurred preview
$29.99 unlock, instant report
Full stack used
React 18TypeScriptExpress 5SupabaseStripePython records pipelineVercel
