IdeaGraph

A spatial reasoning environment that takes a product idea and renders its underlying structure as an interactive, force-directed graph. Explore use cases, risks, system topology, and dependencies — then apply stress overlays to see where the idea breaks.

Live demo →

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What It Does

You type a product idea. The system grows a graph of its structure. You explore it.

• Force-directed graph — nodes settle into a spatial arrangement that reflects the idea's topology
• Stress overlays — toggle constraints (Trust, Scale, Cost, Regulation) to see which parts weaken
• Break points — hover any node to see exactly where and why it fails first
• Collapse to Reality — remove speculative branches to reveal what the product actually becomes

This is not a report generator. It is a thinking environment.

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Architecture

Frontend: React 18 + D3-force + Framer Motion (GitHub Pages)
Backend:  Node.js + Express + SSE (Railway)
LLM:      Claude claude-sonnet-4-20250514 via Anthropic API

See ARCHITECTURE.md for full system design.

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Project Files

File	Purpose
CLAUDE.md	Operating instructions for Claude Code
PRD.md	Live product requirements — edit to drive development
ask.md	Brainstorming and open questions
SKILL.md	Coding patterns and conventions
PROMPTS.md	All LLM prompts, versioned
ARCHITECTURE.md	System design and decisions
AGENTS.md	Agentic task instructions
CHANGELOG.md	What changed and why

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Local Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• An Anthropic API key (get one here)

Setup

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/your-username/ideagraph.git
cd ideagraph

# Install
npm install

# Configure
cp .env.example .env.local
# Edit .env.local and add your ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

# Run (starts both frontend and backend)
npm run dev

Frontend: http://localhost:5173 Backend: http://localhost:3001

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Deployment

Frontend → GitHub Pages

Automatic. Every push to main triggers the GitHub Actions workflow in .github/workflows/deploy.yml which builds and deploys to GitHub Pages.

First-time setup:

1. Go to repo Settings → Pages
2. Set source to "GitHub Actions"
3. Add VITE_API_URL to repo Settings → Secrets (your Railway backend URL)
4. Update base in vite.config.ts to match your repo name

Backend → Railway

1. Create a new Railway project
2. Connect your GitHub repo
3. Set root directory to / (Railway will detect the Node app)
4. Add environment variable: ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
5. Railway auto-deploys on push to main

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Contributing / Modifying

This project is designed to be driven by PRD.md. To change product behavior:

1. Edit PRD.md with your changes
2. Add an entry to CHANGELOG.md
3. If using Claude Code: it will read CLAUDE.md and make the corresponding code changes

To change LLM prompts: edit PROMPTS.md first, then update src/lib/prompts.ts.