Absolutely this. Anybody can pick up the cool framework of the day and click together some usable cool looking app/website, heck even gpt can do this nowadays.

Absolutely this. Anybody can pick up the cool framework of the day and click together some usable cool looking app/website, heck even gpt can do this nowadays. What is harder to grasp is how a language works, how to architecture an app, what to look for security-wise, how something becomes scaleable from the get-go. Talking about such things in an interview will make you look far more experienced than some boilerplate projects. Not to dissuade from them - but then build something for the longer run, something that you need as well, not something to prop up your github repo.