NexusChat ⚡️

A full-stack, real-time chat application featuring direct messaging and live, streaming conversations with advanced AI personas.

Application Architecture Overview

NexusChat is built with a decoupled, API-driven architecture, combining a powerful Laravel backend with a responsive React frontend. It demonstrates a complete, modern development workflow, from secure authentication to real-time, AI-powered interactions.

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✨ Core Features

• Real-Time Communication: Engage in instant, bidirectional conversations powered by Laravel Reverb and WebSockets, ensuring zero-latency message delivery.
• Intelligent AI Personas: Chat with unique AI personalities integrated via the Google Gemini API. Each persona has a distinct system prompt defining its behavior.
• Live Streaming Responses: Experience a dynamic "typing" effect as AI responses are streamed chunk-by-chunk directly to the UI for a more engaging and natural interaction.
• Secure Authentication: Robust and secure user authentication supporting both traditional email/password login and seamless Google OAuth 2.0, all managed by Laravel Sanctum.
• Modern, Responsive Interface: A sleek and intuitive UI built with React and Tailwind CSS, designed for a seamless experience across all devices.
• Optimized State Management: Efficiently manages server-side state with TanStack Query and client-side state with Zustand for a fast and reliable user experience.
• API Safeguards: Built-in protection against abuse with API rate limiting for message creation and a hard cap on total user registrations.

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Category	Technology
Backend	Laravel 12 (PHP 8.4), Laravel Reverb, Laravel Sanctum, PostgreSQL, Google Gemini API
Frontend	React 18 (Vite), TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, TanStack Query, Zustand, Axios, Laravel Echo
DevOps	Composer, NPM, Git

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🚀 Getting Started

To get a local copy up and running, follow these simple steps.

Prerequisites

• PHP >= 8.4
• Node.js >= 18.x
• Composer
• PostgreSQL or another configured database

Installation

1. Clone the repositories for both the frontend (chat-client) and backend (chat-api).

2. Setup Backend (chat-api):

   # Navigate to the backend directory
   cd chat-api
   
   # Install PHP dependencies
   composer install
   
   # Create your environment file
   cp .env.example .env
   
   # Generate an application key
   php artisan key:generate
   
   # Configure your .env file with database, Reverb, and Google credentials
   # ...
   
   # Run database migrations and seeders
   php artisan migrate:fresh --seed
   
   # Start the development server and queue worker
   php artisan serve
   php artisan reverb:start
   php artisan queue:listen

3. Setup Frontend (chat-client):

   # Navigate to the frontend directory
   cd chat-client
   
   # Install NPM packages
   npm install
   
   # Create your environment file and add VITE_REVERB_* variables
   cp .env.example .env.local
   
   # Start the development server
   npm run dev

Your application should now be running, with the frontend available at http://localhost:5173 and the backend at http://localhost:8000.