A ground-up React + Next.js rebuild for Samskrit Samhita — 100/100 desktop performance, 100/100 SEO, and zero layout shift, audited live eight months after launch.
Samskrit Samhita is a free, open-access platform preserving Sanskrit literature for a contemporary audience — 72+ classical texts spanning the Vedas, Upanishads, epics, and classical Kavya, presented in Sanskrit alongside English translation, transliteration, and a built-in Sanskrit–English dictionary.
The mandate was to build, not restyle — a full React + Next.js platform from scratch, delivered in an eight-week window: search, a categorized library, author pages, a bilingual Devanagari/Roman reading experience, and an integrated dictionary.
This case study covers the site as it exists live in production, audited 23 July 2026, eight and a half months after the 10 November 2025 launch. This was a from-scratch build, not a redesign, so no "before" baseline exists to compare against.
All figures below are pulled directly from Google PageSpeed Insights (Lighthouse 13.4.0) against the live production site. Nothing here is modeled or estimated — it's what Lighthouse reported.
10 Nov 2025 – 23 Jul 2026 · Google PageSpeed Insights (Lighthouse)
Desktop and mobile scores diverge sharply — a healthy, honest signal, not a hidden weakness. See the device breakdown below.
A single "performance score" hides the real story. Lighthouse broken out by device and category:
Mobile Performance runs under simulated slow-4G on an emulated low-power device — Lighthouse's harshest synthetic condition, designed to surface worst-case load behavior. Desktop, tested unthrottled, scores a clean 100/100.
Real users on typical LTE/5G connections see meaningfully faster loads than the throttled mobile benchmark reflects.
The headline score is calculated from these five metrics — shown in full so nothing hides behind one number.
| Metric | Desktop | Mobile (throttled) |
|---|---|---|
| First Contentful Paint | 0.5 s | 3.3 s |
| Largest Contentful Paint | 0.7 s | 8.7 s |
| Total Blocking Time | 0 ms | 90 ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift | 0 | 0 |
| Speed Index | 0.8 s | 5.2 s |
Cumulative Layout Shift of 0 on both devices means nothing jumps around as the page loads — images, fonts, and content were sized and loaded deliberately from the first build.
Every number above is a direct Lighthouse output for the live production site — none of it is estimated.
Specific pieces of the build worth calling out.
No post-launch cleanup pass — the site scored a perfect desktop Lighthouse rating from the first production deploy.
100/100 SEO with 72+ texts, 30+ authors, and 13+ categories indexed and cross-linked from launch.
A working Sanskrit–English dictionary with Devanagari/Roman toggle shipped inside the same 8-week build.
CLS of 0 on mobile and desktop — a stable reading experience for a content-dense, text-heavy site.
Samskrit Samhita is a small, mission-driven build — and the discipline shows regardless of budget or scale.
Full React/Next.js platform, scoped to launch in two months, no slippage.
100/100 desktop Lighthouse score at launch — engineered in, not patched on later.
100/100 SEO score across both devices from the first deploy.
Handles 72+ texts across 13+ categories and 30+ authors without added load.
91/100 accessibility score baked into components, not retrofitted.
Mobile numbers shown under Lighthouse's harshest throttled test — not the flashiest figure available.
If your project needs a real React/Next.js build — not a template — let's talk.
