🧠 Second Brain

A full-stack knowledge management platform to save, organize, and retrieve your content — tweets, videos, articles, and notes — all in one place.

Save everything that matters. Find it instantly.

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📸 Preview

Add a demo GIF here — record your screen using Loom or any screen recorder, convert at ezgif.com, and drop the file in the repo.

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✨ Features

• 🔐 JWT Authentication — Secure user accounts with token-based auth
• 🗂️ Content Cards — Save tweets, YouTube videos, articles, and custom notes
• 🔗 Shareable Brain — Generate a public share link so others can view your collection (read-only)
• 🏷️ Tag System — Organize content with tags for fast filtering and retrieval
• 📱 Responsive UI — Clean card-based layout that works on any screen
• ⚡ Fast Retrieval — Indexed MongoDB queries for low-latency content lookup

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Vite
Backend	Node.js, Express.js, TypeScript
Database	MongoDB (Mongoose ODM)
Auth	JWT, Bcrypt
Deployment	Render / Vercel

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🏗️ Project Structure

Second-Brain/
├── Backend/
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── controllers/    # Business logic (content, users, sharing)
│   │   ├── models/         # Mongoose schemas (User, Content, Tag, Link)
│   │   ├── routes/         # Express route definitions
│   │   ├── middleware/      # JWT auth middleware
│   │   └── index.ts        # Entry point
│   └── package.json
│
└── Frontend/
    └── Second_Brain_FE/
        ├── src/
        │   ├── components/     # Card, Sidebar, Modal, Button
        │   ├── pages/          # Dashboard, Login, Register
        │   └── hooks/          # Custom React hooks
        └── vite.config.ts

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18+
• MongoDB instance (local or MongoDB Atlas)

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/Athang69/Second-Brain.git
cd Second-Brain

2. Backend Setup

cd Backend
npm install

Create a .env file:

PORT=3000
MONGO_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret_key

npm run dev

Backend runs at http://localhost:3000

3. Frontend Setup

cd Frontend/Second_Brain_FE
npm install
npm run dev

Frontend runs at http://localhost:5173

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🔌 API Endpoints

Auth

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/api/v1/signup	Register new user
POST	/api/v1/signin	Login & receive JWT

Content

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/api/v1/content	Add new content item
GET	/api/v1/content	Get all user content
DELETE	/api/v1/content	Delete a content item

Sharing

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/api/v1/brain/share	Generate/revoke share link
GET	/api/v1/brain/:shareLink	View shared brain (public)

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📄 .env.example

PORT=3000
MONGO_URI=mongodb+srv://<username>:<password>@cluster.mongodb.net/second-brain
JWT_SECRET=your_super_secret_key

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💡 Design Decisions

• TypeScript throughout — Chose TypeScript over JavaScript for both frontend and backend to catch type errors at compile time and improve code maintainability
• MongoDB over SQL — Flexible document schema suits the varied content types (tweets, videos, articles, notes) without requiring schema migrations
• JWT stateless auth — Avoids server-side session storage, making the API horizontally scalable

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👨‍💻 Author

Athang Kali — GitHub · LinkedIn · Portfolio