Darshwebdev/MealReel

MealReel has a clear and genuinely appealing product idea: turning food discovery into a short-video feed instead of another static menu grid. The repo already shows a working MERN-style shape around that concept, with a Vite/React frontend, Express backend, MongoDB/Mongoose models, JWT cookie auth, ImageKit upload support, and separate flows for users versus food partners. The most distinctive part is the reel feed implementation: the React ReelFeed component uses IntersectionObserver to auto-play and pause videos as the user scrolls, which fits the product premise well and gives the app more personality than a basic CRUD food-ordering demo.

The backend organization is also headed in the right direction. Routes, controllers, models, middleware, and storage services are split into separate folders, so the code is easy to navigate. The food-partner upload flow, like/save models, category filtering, and profile lookup make the app feel like more than a mockup. The README does a good job explaining the intended experience and includes screenshots, which helps a reviewer or potential contributor understand the product quickly.

The main thing I would tighten is the gap between README promises and production readiness. The docs refer to frontend, but the repo uses frontendCopy, and the README still says the live demo will be added soon even though the backend code references deployed Render/Vercel URLs. Payments are present, but the Razorpay route still uses a hardcoded 299 price and TODOs for fetching the real meal and saving payment state. Auth would also benefit from more defensive handling: set cookie flags such as httpOnly, sameSite, and secure, validate request bodies, and return consistent errors when required fields or upload files are missing. There are no tests, CI workflow, license, contribution guide, or issues yet, so adoption by outside contributors will be limited until those basics are added.

Overall, this is a promising early-stage full-stack project with a specific product angle and a readable structure. I’d focus next on making setup reliable, aligning documentation with the actual folder names and environment variables, adding a license, and writing a small set of backend tests around auth, food creation, like/save toggles, and payment verification. That would make MealReel feel much more credible as an open-source project while preserving the fun reel-based food discovery idea that already stands out.