Second Brain

Visit the live website at: https://vats-second-brain.netlify.app/

Overview

Second Brain is an application designed to save your content with integrated dynamic embedding of social content such as Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube. It allows you to capture, organize, and access your saved content for future reference efficiently.

Features

• Save and organize various types of content
• Dynamic embedding of social media content (Twitter, Reddit, YouTube)
• Easy access to saved content for future use
• Cross-referencing and tagging for better organization
• Search functionality to quickly find your notes and content

Technologies Used

Backend

• Node.js with Express
• TypeScript
• MongoDB with Mongoose
• JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for authentication
• Bcrypt for password hashing
• Zod for schema validation
• dotenv for environment variable management

Frontend

• React with TypeScript
• Vite as build tool and development server
• Tailwind CSS for styling
• React Router for routing
• Recoil for state management
• Axios for HTTP requests

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v16 or higher recommended)
• npm (comes with Node.js)
• MongoDB instance (local or cloud)

Backend Setup

1. Navigate to the backend directory:

cd backend

2. Install dependencies:

npm install

3. Create a .env file in the backend directory and add necessary environment variables, for example:

MONGODB_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret
PORT=5000

4. Build the backend TypeScript code:

npm run build

5. Start the backend server:

npm start

Alternatively, you can run the backend in one step (build and start):

npm run dev

The backend server will run on the port specified in your .env file (default 5000).

Frontend Setup

1. Navigate to the frontend directory:

cd frontend

2. Install dependencies:

npm install

3. Start the development server:

npm run dev

This will start the frontend on a local development server (usually http://localhost:5173).

4. To build the frontend for production:

npm run build

5. To preview the production build locally:

npm run preview

Folder Structure

• backend/: Backend source code, including controllers, routes, models, and middleware
• frontend/: Frontend React application source code, components, pages, and assets
• README.md: Project overview and setup instructions
• netlify.toml: Configuration for Netlify deployment

Usage

This project serves as a content saving and embedding platform where you can capture, organize, and retrieve notes and social media content efficiently. Use the frontend interface to interact with your data, and the backend handles data storage and authentication.

Contributing

Contributions to improve the Second Brain framework are welcome. Please feel free to submit a pull request or open an issue to discuss potential improvements.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Inspired by Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain methodology
• Thanks to the knowledge management community for continuous insights and improvements