In-Browser Vehicle Capture

Motor insurance in Malaysia does not have to be taken out the moment a car is bought, so by the time a policy is written the car already has a history behind it. The insurer needs photographs of it as it stands that day, filed with the policy.

This is the thing that takes them. It runs in the browser, on the phone already in someone's hand — no app store, no install, no account before the first shot. A hook wraps the media stream, the rear camera opens by default, and the frame is drawn to a canvas and handed over as a JPEG that goes straight into their database. Every track stops when the component unmounts, so the indicator light goes out with it. React and styled-components; three weeks, and it was urgent.

The work was in the camera itself — picking the lens, sizing the capture, tuning until the result was good enough to serve as evidence rather than merely a picture of a car. Mobile Safari made that harder, as it always does: the API only exists in a secure context, permissions behave on their own terms, and orientation arrives rotated unless you deal with it.