Zen Bonsais

Hi HN! This is a small, quiet side project: a shared world map where each person plants a single bonsai wherever they like (their current location or any point on the map).

You can explore the map without signing up. To plant yours, you sign in with a one-time code sent to your email. Each account gets exactly one bonsai, picked from 10 species, and it never grows or changes. The idea is a calm, static "garden" rather than something you have to check every day. You can also send a bit of "energy" (just a counter) to other people's bonsai, except your own.

How it's built: - Front end: Bootstrap 5 + vanilla JS, Leaflet for the map (CARTO basemap tiles) - Back end: plain PHP + MySQL on shared hosting, PHPMailer for the email codes - The bonsai illustrations were generated with AI

I come from a design/front-end background and don't write backend code, so I built the server side with AI assistance. That's the part I'd most like feedback on: security, abuse prevention, anything I'm missing or doing badly.

I'd also love to hear what you'd improve in the sign-up flow, since it's the main friction before planting.

Thanks for taking a look!