AI Research Agent - Production-Grade Implementation

A sophisticated AI Research Agent demonstrating enterprise-level engineering practices with advanced async patterns, robust observability, and production-ready architecture.

🏗️ Architecture Overview

Frontend (Next.js/TS) → API Gateway → Background Jobs → External APIs → Database
                            ↓
                    Observability Stack (Logs/Metrics/Traces)

📋 Tech Stack

Backend (Node.js/TypeScript)

• Framework: Express.js with TypeScript
• Database: PostgreSQL with Prisma ORM
• Job Queue: Bull.js with Redis for async processing
• Observability: Winston logging + structured logging
• Validation: Zod for type-safe validation
• Security: Helmet, CORS, rate limiting

Frontend (Next.js/TypeScript)

• Framework: Next.js 14 with App Router
• UI: Tailwind CSS with modern dark theme
• State Management: React hooks with custom API client
• Real-time: Polling for job status updates

Infrastructure

• Containerization: Docker with multi-stage builds
• Database: PostgreSQL with connection pooling
• Cache/Queue: Redis for job queue
• Reverse Proxy: Nginx for load balancing

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• Docker and Docker Compose
• PostgreSQL (if running locally)
• Redis (if running locally)

1. Clone and Setup

git clone <repository-url>
cd ai-research-agent
npm install

2. Environment Setup

Backend environment:

cd backend
cp .env.example .env

Edit .env with your configuration:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://postgres:password@localhost:5432/ai_research_agent"
REDIS_URL="redis://localhost:6379"
JWT_SECRET="your-super-secret-jwt-key-change-in-production"
PORT=3001

# Optional: External API Keys
OPENAI_API_KEY="your-openai-key"
NEWS_API_KEY="your-news-api-key"

3. Database Setup

cd backend
npm run db:generate
npm run db:migrate

4. Development Mode

Option A: With Docker (Recommended)

docker-compose up --build

Option B: Local Development

Terminal 1 - Start services:

docker-compose up postgres redis

Terminal 2 - Backend:

cd backend
npm run dev

Terminal 3 - Frontend:

cd frontend
npm run dev