Explore

Explore helps students explore domains, connect with mentors, reflect on what they are learning, and get direction based on their activity.

What It Includes

• Student sign-in with Google OAuth
• Mentor sign-in and signup with email/password
• Mentor discovery with real mentor profiles from Supabase
• Student reflections and interest tracking
• Realtime chat between students and mentors
• A FastAPI recommendation service for domain guidance

Stack

• Frontend: Next.js 16, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
• Backend: FastAPI
• Database/Auth/Realtime: Supabase
• ML: scikit-learn TF-IDF similarity

Project Structure

app/          Next.js routes
components/   Shared UI and auth provider
lib/          Supabase helpers, types, local utilities
backend/      FastAPI app and ML recommender
supabase/     SQL schema and seed files
public/       Static assets

Local Setup

1. Install frontend dependencies

npm install

2. Add frontend env vars

Create .env.local in the repo root:

NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL=
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY=
NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL=http://localhost:3000
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8000

Optional legacy fallback:

NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY=

3. Add backend env vars

Create backend/.env:

SUPABASE_URL=
SUPABASE_SECRET_KEY=

Optional legacy fallback:

SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=

4. Run the frontend

npm run dev

5. Run the backend

Use Python 3.13 on Windows:

py -3.13 -m venv .venv
source .venv/Scripts/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install -r backend/requirements.txt
python -m uvicorn backend.main:app --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000

Supabase Setup

Run the SQL files

In Supabase SQL Editor, run:

1. supabase/schema.sql
2. supabase/seed.sql

Configure auth

In Supabase Dashboard:

1. Enable Google under Authentication -> Providers
2. Set Authentication -> Hooks -> Before User Created to public.hook_control_signup
3. Add redirect URLs:
   • http://localhost:3000/auth/callback
   • your production callback URL

Student access rule

Students may sign in using Google OAuth (no institution domain restriction by default).

Mentor access rule

Mentors sign up with email/password. Their email must exist in public.allowed_mentor_emails (or be added by an admin).

Mentor Signup And Manual Enable

Mentors can sign up directly from /login using the Sign up as Mentor button.

If you need to manually promote an existing Supabase auth user to mentor, run:

select public.enable_mentor_by_user_id(
  'USER_UUID_HERE',
  'Mentor Name',
  'Mentor bio',
  array['Specialisation 1', 'Specialisation 2']
);

To find the user ID:

select id, email
from auth.users
order by created_at desc;

Final Checks Before Deploy

App checks

• npm run lint
• npm run build
• py -3.13 -m py_compile backend\main.py backend\ml\domain_profiles.py backend\ml\recommender.py

Product checks

• Student Google login works
• Mentor signup works for allowlisted mentor emails
• Mentor profile appears in the mentor list
• Student can save profile info and reflections
• Mentor can see student context after a session starts
• Realtime chat works in both directions

Deployment

• Frontend: https://explore-vit.vercel.app/ (set as NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL)
• Backend: your deployed backend URL (set as NEXT_PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL)
• Database/Auth/Realtime: Supabase

Add the same environment variables in production and update Supabase redirect URLs to include your deployed frontend domain.