Installation

You need Node.js 18 or newer, a MongoDB instance (local or Atlas), and, for the full realtime behaviour, a Redis instance and Cloudinary keys. Uploads and the socket adapter both degrade gracefully without them.

Separate terminals — the two apps install independently:

cd backend
npm install
cp .env.example .env   # then fill in the values below
npm run dev

cd frontend
npm install
cp .env.example .env   # then fill in the values below
npm run dev

The frontend serves on http://localhost:5173 and talks to the backend URL in its own .env. Backend scripts are plain node index.js for both dev and start — there is no watcher; restart the process to pick up changes.

Environment valuesCopy Anchor Link

Backend .env (names from .env.example plus the optional names the code actually reads — see Environment variables for the full table):

PORT=5000
MONGO_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:5173

Frontend .env:

VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:5000/api
VITE_SOCKET_URL=http://localhost:5000

Only placeholder values belong in these files. Never commit real secrets — the repo's committed uploads/ folder already shows why stray files matter.

Sources: README.md, backend/README.md, frontend/README.md, backend/.env.example, frontend/.env.example (documented at commit cdef8af)