PathPilot - Career Guidance Platform

A secure career guidance platform that connects students with mentors. Students create profiles and get matched with professionals; they can chat (ephemeral, not stored) and use voice/video calls within a session.

Features

• Student registration: Sign up with name, age, field of study, interests, and goals. AI-driven follow-up questions for better matching.
• Professional registration: Sign up with bio, expertise, and experience.
• Matching: Rule-based matching by field of study and expertise; students can request a session with a mentor.
• Sessions: Request -> Accept -> Active -> End. Only session metadata is stored; chat is ephemeral and cleared when the session ends.
• Chat: Polling-based chat per session (no WebSocket required). Messages are kept in memory only and deleted when the session ends. Works with just npm run dev.
• Voice/Video: Optional WebRTC (peer-to-peer) with signaling over the WebSocket server when running npm run ws.
• Reporting: Students can report professionals; professionals can report students (reason + description).

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Next.js 16 (App Router), React, Tailwind CSS
• Backend: Next.js API routes, WebSocket server (Node, ws)
• Database: PostgreSQL with Prisma
• Auth: NextAuth.js (credentials, JWT)
• AI: OpenAI API for personalized student questions (optional; falls back to static questions if no key)

Setup

1. Clone and install

   cd PathPilot
   npm install

2. Environment

   • Copy .env.example to .env.
   • Set DATABASE_URL to your PostgreSQL connection string.
   • Set NEXTAUTH_SECRET to a long random secret, for example with openssl rand -base64 32.
   • Optional: set OPENAI_API_KEY for AI-generated onboarding questions.
   • Optional: set WS_PORT (default 3001) and NEXT_PUBLIC_WS_URL (for example ws://localhost:3001) for the WebSocket server.
   • Do not commit your real .env. The repository keeps only .env.example.

3. Database

   npx prisma db push
   npx prisma generate

4. Run

   • Chat only (no voice/video):

     npm run dev

   • Chat + voice/video:

     npm run dev:all

5. Open http://localhost:3000. Sign up as a student or mentor, complete onboarding, click Chat to see your sessions, then Open chat to message. Use End session to close the session and clear chat history.

Scripts

• npm run dev - Next.js dev server (chat works via polling)
• npm run dev:all - Next.js + WebSocket server (adds voice/video calls)
• npm run build - Production build
• npm run start - Production server
• npm run ws - WebSocket server (chat + WebRTC signaling)
• npm run db:push - Push Prisma schema to the database
• npm run db:studio - Open Prisma Studio

Project Structure

• app/ - Next.js App Router (auth, dashboard, chat, API routes)
• app/api/ - REST APIs: auth, students, professionals, sessions, reports, ws-token
• server/ws/ - Optional WebSocket server for WebRTC signaling
• lib/ - Shared utilities: db, auth, ai, matching, chat-messages, ws-auth
• prisma/ - Prisma schema

Security And Privacy

• Auth uses JWT sessions with role-based access for students and professionals.
• Chat is not persisted; it stays in memory only and is cleared when a session ends.
• Protected APIs perform session and role checks.
• Reports are stored for moderation; permanent chat logs are not stored. "# PathPilot-app"