A Next.js portfolio starter sold through a video tutorial

A small template with a very specific audience

The repository is a starter kit for a personal portfolio site, and the way it is presented makes that clear. The README opens by describing itself as starter code for a portfolio website created with NextJs, then points at a demo and final code hosted alongside a tutorial, and finally links a video that walks through building it. The audience is therefore a developer who wants to learn by watching, not a team looking for a maintained application framework.

The visible feature set comes from the screenshots in the README. There are light and dark desktop captures of the home page, a light one of the about page, a dark one of the projects page and a light one of the articles page, and mobile captures of the about, projects and articles pages. Light and dark themes, a projects section and an articles section are the visible surfaces of the template.

The rest of the README is an asset list rather than a technical description. The home page profile image is credited to Midjourney, the about page photo to a named Unsplash contributor, the fonts come from Google Fonts, the icons from Iconify, and a lightbulb illustration from a specific free illustration site. The external libraries section names only two entries, framer-motion and Tailwind CSS, and the README closes with a link to a different project by the same creator, an AI headshot generator.

Four scripts and a hand pinned dependency set

The dependency picture is easier to read from the package manifest than from the README. The package is named developer-portfolio-starter-code, marked private and at version 0.1.0, and it carries exactly four scripts:

  "scripts": {
    "dev": "next dev",
    "build": "next build",
    "start": "next start",
    "lint": "next lint"
  },

There is no test script, no type-check script and no formatting script, so a CI setup has to be assembled from the outside.

The runtime dependencies are a fixed set of six packages:

  "dependencies": {
    "eslint": "8.36.0",
    "eslint-config-next": "13.2.4",
    "framer-motion": "^10.6.0",
    "next": "15.5.24",
    "react": "18.2.0",
    "react-dom": "18.2.0"
  }

Two of those pins are worth noticing. eslint-config-next is at 13.2.4 while next is at 15.5.24, so the lint configuration and the framework it is meant to configure come from different major lines. The eslint pin at 8.36.0 is the same generation. In other words, the manifest was assembled by hand and never re-resolved as the framework moved forward, which is exactly what you would expect from a template that is updated when a tutorial needs it rather than when a dependency breaks.

Tailwind is used in the design but absent from the manifest

The README lists Tailwind CSS as one of the two external libraries used in the project, and the styling of the screenshots clearly depends on utility classes. The manifest does not list a tailwindcss dependency, and there is no tailwind.config file among the top level entries, which are .eslintrc.json, .github, .gitignore, README.md, jsconfig.json, next.config.js, package.json, public, src and a folder of website images.

So the CSS pipeline that produces the look of the template is not described by anything you can read in the repository root. The primary language of the project is CSS, and the styles live somewhere under src, but the configuration for the utility framework, and the PostCSS wiring that Tailwind needs, are not part of the visible structure. If you clone this and run the dev server expecting the screenshot, the missing pieces are the first thing you will hit.

This is a fair criticism of a tutorial project, and a fair warning for anyone evaluating it as a starting point rather than as a lesson. It also explains the sibling asset folders: the public directory holds static files, and the website images directory holds the screenshots used in the README, which you would normally delete from your own fork.

The video is the actual documentation

There is no documentation folder here, no components guide and no data source notes. The README says it plainly: if you want to learn how to create it, follow the tutorial, which is a YouTube link, and the demo and final code sit on a separate site that appears to be the creator's tutorial platform.

That decision shapes everything about using the project. A video cannot be searched, diffed or read at a glance, so a specific question such as how a project entry is added, where the articles data comes from, or how the dark theme is toggled can only be answered by scrubbing the recording. For a portfolio site, most of those answers live in a data file under src, which you can read directly, and the code structure under src is the real reference.

The top level also includes a .github directory and a .gitignore, so there is issue and pull request plumbing, and jsconfig.json next to next.config.js, which tells you the project relies on path aliases rather than deep relative imports. Neither next.config.js nor the .eslintrc.json contents were listed, so the routing mode, the image handling and the lint rules are all things you will have to open and read yourself.

Licence and maintenance are the weak points

The licence is listed as unknown, which for a project meant to be copied as a starting point is the most consequential fact on the page. A template you fork and publish is a derivative work of whatever code you keep, and the repository does not state a licence you can rely on. That is a gap you have to close by reading the LICENSE file yourself, and if the file is missing, by asking the author, before you put the site online.

The maintenance picture is better than the licence picture. The repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-10-06, so the tree is being touched, and there is a .github directory suggesting a pull request workflow exists. There are no GitHub releases, so there is no version history to consult and nothing to pin your fork to, which is another reason to read the file rather than trust the manifest.

The homepage listed for the project is a deployed copy on Vercel, which is the fastest way to judge the template before you clone anything. Judge the mobile captures with the same attention as the desktop ones, since the portfolio audience reads your work on a phone and the README shows the mobile variants separately for a reason.

Editorial conclusion

This starter is a reasonable choice for a developer who wants a portfolio site quickly and is willing to follow the video tutorial, and for those who want to see one working example of Next.js with Framer Motion and Tailwind. It is the wrong base for a commercial site, because the licence is not stated, and for a team that wants a maintained component library, because the dependency versions are pinned by hand. Before you build on it, check the LICENSE file yourself, decide whether the Tailwind setup works with your own toolchain, and run npm run lint to see whether the pinned eslint-config-next still matches the pinned Next.js version.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. codebucks27/Next.js-Developer-Portfolio-Starter-Code on GitHub
2. Issues
3. Project website
4. README