💡 LinkUp.AI – Smart Academic Profile Manager for Students

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🧠 Project Overview

LinkUp.AI is a student-first, AI-powered profile management platform designed to help learners build, organize, and showcase their academic and professional journeys. Unlike traditional platforms built for working professionals, LinkUp.AI is optimized to meet the unique needs of students—acting as a smart portfolio, career prep tool, and personal branding assistant in one place.

The platform helps students document achievements, generate personalized bios and resumes, discover tailored resources, and connect with like-minded peers—all with the help of AI.

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🎯 Objectives

• Build a structured academic portfolio for students.
• Automate resume creation, bio generation, and project summaries using AI.
• Recommend personalized resources and career paths based on interests and learning history.
• Foster student collaboration for projects, learning, and mentorship.
• Help students get discovered early by recruiters and internship providers.

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🏗️ Core Features

👤 Profile Management

• ✨ AI-Generated Bio: One-click generation of impactful student introductions.
• 📝 Smart Resume Builder: Convert your academic data into a clean, downloadable resume.
• 🧠 Project Summarizer: Automatically summarize long or technical project details.

📘 Portfolio Timeline

• Add:
  • 🎓 Courses
  • 💼 Internships
  • 🛠️ Projects
  • 🏆 Achievements
  • 📂 Certifications
• Upload supporting documents (certificates, notes, reports).
• View everything in a clean, visual timeline that tracks growth over time.

🤝 Collaboration

• Find:
  • 🧑‍💻 Coding partners
  • 🧑‍🏫 Mentors
  • 🧑‍🎓 Group project teammates

🧠 AI-Powered Recommendations

• Discover opportunities tailored to your journey:
  • 📚 Courses
  • 📜 Certifications
  • 🏢 Internships
  • 🚀 Projects
  • 🔍 Jobs

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🔐 Authentication & Personalization

• Firebase/Google login
• User dashboard with customizable sections
• Public/private profile toggle
• Secure, token-based session management

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⚙️ Technical Architecture

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React.js
Backend	Next.js (API Routes, SSR/SSG) / Node.js with Express
AI/NLP	OpenAI API (Bio, Resume Generation, Summarization) / Google Generative AI
Storage	Firebase / AWS S3 (for documents and certificates)
Database	PostgreSQL / MongoDB (for user data and timelines)

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📦 Key Packages and Libraries

Frontend (React + Vite)

Main Packages:

• react: Core React library for building user interfaces.
• react-dom: DOM-specific methods for React.
• react-router-dom: Declarative routing for React.js.
• axios: Promise-based HTTP client for making API requests.
• firebase: Firebase SDK for authentication and other services.
• jspdf: Library for generating PDFs in JavaScript (for resume downloads).
• lucide-react: A collection of beautiful open-source icons.
• react-icons: Popular icon library for React.
• socket.io-client: Client-side library for WebSocket-based real-time communication.

Development Dependencies:

• vite: Next-generation frontend tooling for fast development.
• @vitejs/plugin-react: Vite plugin for React projects.
• eslint: Pluggable JavaScript linter for identifying and reporting on patterns found in ECMAScript/JavaScript code.
• @types/react: TypeScript type definitions for React.
• @types/react-dom: TypeScript type definitions for react-dom.

Backend (Node + Express)

Main Packages:

• express: Fast, unopinionated, minimalist web framework for Node.js.
• cors: Node.js package for providing a Connect/Express middleware that can be used to enable CORS with various options.
• dotenv: Loads environment variables from a .env file.
• axios: Promise-based HTTP client for making external API requests (e.g., to OpenAI).
• mongoose: MongoDB object modeling tool for Node.js (if using MongoDB).
• socket.io: Real-time bidirectional event-based communication.
• @google/generative-ai: Google's Generative AI SDK (for potential future integration or alternative to OpenAI).

Development Dependencies:

• nodemon: Utility that will monitor for any changes in your source and automatically restart your server.

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🚀 Getting Started

To get a local copy up and running, follow these simple steps.

Prerequisites

• Node.js (LTS version recommended)
• npm or Yarn

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone [https://github.com/your-username/LinkUp.AI.git](https://github.com/your-username/LinkUp.AI.git)
   cd LinkUp.AI

2. Navigate into the frontend directory and install dependencies:

   cd frontend
   npm install # or yarn install

3. Navigate back to the root and into the backend directory and install dependencies:

   cd ../backend
   npm install # or yarn install

Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the backend directory with your API keys and configuration.

Example .env file: