Beginner (4th year CS) planning one big AI + Spring Boot project instead of many CRUD projects. Need honest feedback
Hey everyone,
I'm a 4th-year Computer Science student and I'm trying to make the best use of the little time I have left before placements.
Instead of building lots of small CRUD applications, I want to learn through one large, production-style that teaches me real backend engineering, system design, cloud, and DevOps concepts.
The idea is called CloudForge.
Idea
A Kubernetes-native, multi-tenant SaaS platform where multiple organizations can register and manage their own workspace while keeping all data completely isolated.
Think of it as building the backend infrastructure behind products like Jira, Asana, ClickUp, or Linear rather than just another project management app.
Planned Features
- Multi-tenancy (tenant isolation)
- Authentication & RBAC
- Organizations
- Teams
- Projects
- Subscription & Billing
- Feature Flags
- Notifications
- Audit Logs
- Analytics Dashboard
- Usage Metering
Tech Stack
- Java 21
- Spring Boot 3
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
- Kafka
- Docker
- Kubernetes
- Keycloak
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- OpenTelemetry
- GitHub Actions
Later (Version 2), I'd like to integrate AI:
- RAG
- Vector Database (Qdrant)
- Company Knowledge Base
- Private AI Assistant for each organization
- AI Report Generation
- Semantic Search
The goal isn't to finish everything quickly but to build it incrementally like a real product and learn along the way.
About Me
I'm still a beginner. I know Java and Spring Boot fundamentals, but I want to learn the rest through project-based learning. Since I'm already in my 4th year, I don't have a lot of time, so I'd rather invest it into one that teaches me as much as possible.
I'd love your honest opinions:
- Is this project too ambitious for a beginner?
- If you were hiring a new graduate, would a project like this stand out?
- Which features would you remove or postpone?
- Would you build this as a monolith first or start with microservices?
- If you think there's a better project idea that would teach more and have more resume value, I'd genuinely love to hear it.
I'm not attached to this idea. If you have a more interesting or more realistic idea that covers backend engineering, distributed systems, cloud, and AI, please suggest it.
I'm looking for honest feedback—even if you think this is a bad idea.
Thanks in advance!