Role: Full Stack Developer
Technologies: PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS
Project Overview
Developed a custom automation system for a puzzle-content publisher to streamline the creation of YouTube puzzle walkthroughs. The solution automated the complete workflow from puzzle input to interactive solution playback, significantly reducing manual effort and enabling high-volume content production.
Challenges
- Large search space
- Designed an efficient state-space search to solve Unblock Me puzzle configurations while minimizing unnecessary exploration.
- Memory optimization
- Refactored data structures and search implementation to reduce RAM usage, allowing larger puzzles to be processed reliably without exhausting system resources.
- Scalable batch processing
- Built an automated scanner that continuously processed pending puzzle files, eliminating manual tracking of completed and incomplete puzzles.
- Content production bottlenecks
- Created a browser-based solution viewer that converted solver output into an animated walkthrough, making it easy to record YouTube videos directly from generated solutions.
Solution
- Automated puzzle ingestion and processing.
- Generated optimized solution files for web playback.
- Built an interactive playback interface for visualizing solutions.
- Designed the system to support continuous content generation with minimal operator intervention.
Results
- Reduced manual processing time by automating the puzzle-solving workflow.
- Simplified maintenance by separating puzzle input, solution generation, and content presentation into independent modules.
- Created a scalable publishing pipeline capable of supporting daily YouTube uploads.