BrainCache is a personal "second brain" for the web. Instead of DM-ing yourself links on WhatsApp whenever you find a useful article, tweet, YouTube video, or resource, BrainCache gives you a dedicated place to save and revisit everything.

You can log in, add content with a title/link/description, browse it later in a dashboard, and share individual items via public links. In the future, a search feature will let you quickly find items you saved long ago.

• Save any useful URL (articles, tweets, videos, docs, etc.) with a title and optional description
• Authenticated dashboard showing all of your saved items
• Public share links for individual items (read-only views)
• Cookie + JWT–based authentication
• Planned: full-text search over saved content so you can retrieve old links by keywords

• Signup
  • 
• Login
  • 
• Dashboard with saved links
  • 
• Public share view
  • 
  • 

BrainCache is a full-stack TypeScript app:

• Backend – Node.js + Express + TypeScript + MongoDB (under backend/)
• Frontend – React + TypeScript + Vite (under frontend/)

• Entry point: backend/src/index.ts
  • Loads environment variables from backend/env using dotenv
  • Connects to MongoDB via backend/src/db/index.ts
  • Boots the Express app from backend/src/app.ts
• App wiring: backend/src/app.ts
  • Configures CORS and JSON body parsing
  • Attaches cookie parsing
  • Mounts routers:
    • /api/v1/auth → auth routes
    • /api/v1/content → content CRUD + sharing
• Models (Mongoose):
  • User – auth users, hashed passwords, JWT helpers
  • Content – saved items (title, link, description, owner, share flags)
  • Share – mapping from Content to share IDs/URLs
• Controllers:
  • user.controller.ts – signup, login, logout, token management
  • content.controller.ts – add/update/delete/list content, generate/clear share links, resolve content by share ID
• Middleware:
  • auth.middleware.ts – verifies JWT access tokens (cookie or Authorization header) and populates req.user

• Entry point: frontend/src/main.tsx
  • Wraps the app in AuthProvider (auth context)
  • Renders the router (App.tsx) and global toast notifications
• Routing: frontend/src/App.tsx
  • /login, /signup – auth pages; redirect to /dashboard if already logged in
  • /dashboard – main authenticated dashboard (protected by PrivateRoute)
  • /share/content/:shareId – public read-only view for a shared item
  • /* – default route that sends unauthenticated users to login, and authenticated users to /dashboard
• State & auth: frontend/src/context/AuthContext.tsx
  • Stores the current user in React state and localStorage
  • Exposes a useAuth() hook used throughout the app
• API layer: frontend/src/services/http.ts
  • Shared Axios instance with baseURL pointing at the deployed backend API
  • Sends cookies (withCredentials: true) and attaches Authorization: Bearer <token> from localStorage
• UI pages & components:
  • pages/Dashboard.tsx – fetches and renders saved content, wires up share/unshare/delete and the "Add Content" modal
  • pages/Login.tsx & pages/Signup.tsx – handle auth flows against the backend
  • pages/ShareContent.tsx – loads a shared item using its share ID and renders a public view
  • pages/LandingPage.tsx – marketing/landing experience using Navbar + Hero

• Node.js and npm
• MongoDB instance (local or hosted)

git clone <your-repo-url>
cd BrainCache

In backend/, create a file named env (no leading dot). At minimum, define:

MONGODB_URI=
DB_NAME=

ACCESS_TOKEN_SECRET=your-access-token-secret
ACCESS_TOKEN_EXPIRY=

REFRESH_TOKEN_SECRET=your-refresh-token-secret
REFRESH_TOKEN_EXPIRY=

CORS_ORIGIN=
PORT=8000

Adjust values for your environment. For local development with the frontend at http://localhost:5173, you may want to include that origin in CORS or change CORS_ORIGIN and the CORS setup in backend/src/app.ts.

From the repo root:

cd backend
npm install

cd ../frontend
npm install

From backend/:

npm run dev

This compiles the TypeScript and starts the API server on PORT from your env file (default 8000).

From frontend/:

npm run dev

By default Vite serves the app at http://localhost:5173.

Make sure the frontend is configured to talk to your backend URL in frontend/src/services/http.ts.

From backend/:

• npm run dev – build TypeScript and start the server
• npm run build – compile TypeScript to dist/
• npm start – run the compiled server from dist/index.js

From frontend/:

• npm run dev – start Vite dev server
• npm run build – type-check + production build
• npm run lint – run ESLint
• npm run preview – preview the production build

Planned improvements include:

• Search across saved content by title, description, or link so you can quickly find items saved long ago
• Additional quality-of-life features around organizing and filtering saved items