CollabNote

A collaborative workspace that combines real-time document editing with spatial thinking tools — canvases, decision logs and knowledge maps — so a team's notes, reasoning and diagrams live in one place instead of three apps.

Features

• Real-time collaboration — concurrent editing over Yjs CRDTs and WebSockets. No lock contention; edits merge without a central arbiter.
• Thinking Canvas — a spatial surface (React Flow) for brainstorming and diagramming alongside the document.
• Decision Log — records decisions with their context, so the why survives after the discussion scrolls away.
• Knowledge Map — a force-directed graph of how documents relate.
• AI assistance — Gemini-backed summarising and drafting.

Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	React, Vite, TypeScript
Realtime	Yjs, y-websocket
Canvas / graph	React Flow, react-force-graph-2d
Backend	Express, Supabase (Postgres)
AI	Google Gemini (@google/genai)

Getting started

Prerequisites: Node.js 20+, a Supabase project, a Gemini API key.

git clone https://github.com/ieeecsopen/collabnote
cd collabnote
npm install

Create .env in the project root:

VITE_SUPABASE_URL=https://<project-ref>.supabase.co
VITE_SUPABASE_KEY=<anon/publishable key>
VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:3001
VITE_COLLABORATION_WS_URL=ws://localhost:1234

Create server/.env for the backend:

PORT=3001
NODE_ENV=development
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5173
DATABASE_URL=<postgres connection string>
SUPABASE_URL=https://<project-ref>.supabase.co
SUPABASE_KEY=<anon key>
SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY=<service-role key - server only, never expose>
GEMINI_API_KEY=<gemini key>
JWT_ACCESS_SECRET=<random 32+ char string>
JWT_REFRESH_SECRET=<different random 32+ char string>

Never commit either file. SUPABASE_SERVICE_KEY bypasses every row-level security policy, and the JWT secrets let anyone mint valid sessions. Both are gitignored — keep it that way.

npm run dev      # frontend
npm run build
npm run preview

Project layout

components/   React components
contexts/     React context providers (auth, workspace)
hooks/        Shared hooks
services/     API and Supabase clients
server/       Express backend (separate .env)

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Open an issue before starting anything substantial.

Good areas to help with: offline/reconnect handling for the Yjs provider, accessibility on the canvas, and test coverage — there is very little today.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE.