Aspirant-Saathi 🚀

Aspirant-Saathi is a web application designed to help competitive exam aspirants (UPSC, State PSC, CAPF, etc.) improve their answer-writing skills through instant, AI-driven, and examiner-style evaluations.

📁 Project Structure

This repository is organized as a monorepo containing two main parts:

• client/ — React frontend application (Create React App + React Router)
• server/ — Node.js & Express backend (MongoDB + Google Gemini AI integration)

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Frontend

• Framework: React.js
• Routing: React Router DOM
• Styling: Vanilla CSS with custom modern glassmorphism and modern UI
• Auth: Google OAuth (`@react-oauth/google`), JWT

Backend

• Framework: Node.js, Express.js
• Database: MongoDB (using Mongoose)
• AI Integration: Google Generative AI (Gemini 2.5 Flash)
• Authentication: JWT (JSON Web Tokens), bcryptjs
• Email Service: Nodemailer (SMTP based OTPs & Notifications)
• Image Upload: Multer

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⚙️ Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following installed on your machine:

• Node.js (v16 or higher recommended)
• MongoDB (Local instance or MongoDB Atlas Cloud URI)
• A Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account for OAuth Client ID
• Google Gemini API Key
• (Optional) App password for a Gmail account to send out emails (Nodemailer)

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🚀 Quick Start (Development Setup)

1. Install Dependencies

Run the following commands from the root of the project to install all required dependencies for both the frontend and the backend.

# Install client dependencies
cd client
npm install

# Install server dependencies
cd ../server
npm install

2. Environment Variables Integration

Create a .env file inside both the client and server folders with the respective variables:

server/.env:

# Database and Server
PORT=5000
MONGO_URI=mongodb+srv://<username>:<password>@cluster0.mongodb.net/dbname

# AI and Auth
GEMINI_API_KEY=your_gemini_api_key
GEMINI_MODEL=models/gemini-2.5-flash
JWT_SECRET=super_secret_jwt_key
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=your_google_oauth_client_id

# Email (Nodemailer using Gmail App Passwords)
EMAIL_USER=your_support_email@gmail.com
EMAIL_PASS=your_app_password

client/.env:

REACT_APP_API_URL=http://localhost:5000/api
REACT_APP_BACKEND_URL=http://localhost:5000
REACT_APP_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=your_google_oauth_client_id

3. Run the Development Servers

You will need to run the client and the server simultaneously in two separate terminals.

Terminal 1 (Backend Server):

cd server
npm run dev

The server will start on port 5000 (usually http://localhost:5000).

Terminal 2 (Frontend React App):

cd client
npm start

The frontend will start on port 3000 (usually http://localhost:3000).

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📦 Build for Production

To create an optimized production build of the frontend, run:

cd client
npm run build

This will compile the React app into static files in the client/build folder, which can be deployed to Vercel, Netlify, or served via Express.

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📝 Key Features

• AI Answer Evaluation: Evaluate typed or handwritten images against exam-specific rubrics.
• Model Answers: Automatically generate perfect "Topper" answers for benchmarkings.
• Progress Tracking: Interactive dashboards showing total submissions, streaks, and focus areas.
• Secure Authentication: OTP email verification and one-click Google Sign-in.
• Professional Analytics: Modern stats cards tracking the user's daily progression.

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🤝 Need Help?

Contact Support: aspirantsaathisuppport@gmail.com