Mental Notes

Mental Notes is a Blazor Server web application (Interactive Server render mode) for a podcast and companion site. It uses .NET 9, Entity Framework Core and SQL Server for data persistence.

Key components

• Mental-Notes — main Blazor application (UI, pages, migrations)
• SharedData — shared models and DTOs used by the app

Prerequisites

• .NET 9 SDK
• SQL Server for production (or LocalDB for local development)
• Optional: dotnet-ef tools for applying migrations

Quick start (local development)

1. Clone the repository.

2. Open a terminal and set required environment variables for local development instead of committing secrets:

   • ConnectionStrings__DefaultConnection — a SQL Server connection string (or leave empty and use LocalDB)
   • RESEND_APITOKEN — (optional) API token used by the Resend email client You can use dotnet user-secrets while developing locally instead of environment variables.

3. Apply EF Core migrations (run from solution or project folder):

   dotnet ef database update --project Mental-Notes

4. Run the application from the Mental-Notes project folder:

   dotnet run --project Mental-Notes

5. Open the app in your browser at the URL shown by the run command (typically https://localhost:<port>).

Security and repository notes

• Do NOT commit secrets (connection strings, API keys, certificates or publish profiles).
• The repository's .gitignore is configured to ignore development appsettings*.Development.json, publish profiles and the entire AdminApp folder. Keep secrets in environment variables, dotnet user-secrets or a secrets manager (Azure Key Vault, GitHub Secrets).
• If sensitive data was accidentally committed, rotate the exposed credentials immediately and scrub history (BFG or git filter-repo).

License

This repository is proprietary software owned by Patrick Kellar.

See LICENSE.md for the full terms. In short: Copyright (c) 2026 Patrick Kellar. All rights reserved.

You may not use, copy, modify, distribute, publish, sublicense, or transfer the Software without prior written permission from the copyright owner.