🎙️ PodCraft — Agentic AI Podcast Episode Planning System

PodCraft is an intelligent, agentic AI-based podcast episode planning system designed to automate and streamline the pre-production phase of podcast creation. It helps podcasters research topics, analyze guest backgrounds, and organize complete episode plans — all from a single platform.

This project was developed as part of the Software Engineering (CSC291) course at COMSATS University, Islamabad.

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📌 Table of Contents

• Overview
• Modules Implemented
• Tech Stack
• Architecture
• Project Structure
• Getting Started
• Environment Variables
• API Endpoints
• Team

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📖 Overview

Podcast creators often spend hours on manual research, unstructured planning, and scattered digital tools before recording an episode. PodCraft solves this by using autonomous AI agents that:

• Analyze podcast niche and guest information
• Research relevant, trending topics
• Generate structured episode plans
• Allow bookmarking and refining of research topics

The system is built as a cross-platform web dashboard with a complete MVC architecture.

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✅ Modules Implemented

Module	Description
Module 1 — User Authentication & Profile Management	Registration, login, JWT-based sessions, account lockout, password recovery, profile and notification settings
Module 2 — User Intent & Guest Analyzer	Episode niche/topic intake, tone selection, guest profile management with AI-generated guest summaries
Module 3 — Topic Research Agent	AI-simulated topic research, relevance scoring, category filtering, bookmarking, and rejection of topics

Full use cases, functional requirements, and SRS documentation are available in the project report.

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🛠️ Tech Stack

Frontend

• React JS (v18+)
• React Router DOM
• Axios
• React Toastify

Backend

• Node.js
• Express JS
• JWT (jsonwebtoken)
• bcryptjs

Database

• MongoDB (Atlas)
• Mongoose ODM

Architecture

• MVC (Model-View-Controller)

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🏗️ Architecture

Client (React) ⇄ REST API (Express) ⇄ MongoDB (Mongoose)

• Models — Mongoose schemas for User, Episode, and Research
• Controllers — Business logic for auth, episodes, and research
• Routes — Express route definitions
• Middleware — JWT-based route protection

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📂 Project Structure

podcraft/
├── Backend/
│   ├── config/
│   │   └── db.js
│   ├── controllers/
│   │   ├── authController.js
│   │   ├── episodeController.js
│   │   └── researchController.js
│   ├── middleware/
│   │   └── authMiddleware.js
│   ├── models/
│   │   ├── User.js
│   │   ├── Episode.js
│   │   └── Research.js
│   ├── routes/
│   │   ├── authRoutes.js
│   │   ├── episodeRoutes.js
│   │   └── researchRoutes.js
│   └── server.js
│
├── frontend/
│   └── podcraft-frontend/
│       ├── src/
│       │   ├── components/
│       │   │   └── common/
│       │   │       └── Navbar.js
│       │   ├── context/
│       │   │   └── AuthContext.js
│       │   ├── pages/
│       │   │   ├── Login.js
│       │   │   ├── Register.js
│       │   │   ├── Dashboard.js
│       │   │   ├── EpisodePage.js
│       │   │   ├── ResearchPage.js
│       │   │   ├── ProfilePage.js
│       │   │   └── EpisodeHistoryPage.js
│       │   ├── utils/
│       │   │   └── api.js
│       │   └── App.js
│
└── docs/
    ├── Podcraft_Scope.pdf
    ├── Podcraft_SRS.pdf
    ├── Podcraft_SRS_Presentation.pptx
    ├── Podcraft_Scope_Presentation.pptx
    ├── Podcraft_SDS.pdf
    ├── Podcraft_TestCases.pdf
    └── Podcraft-Final-Report-Presentation.pptx

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18+)
• npm
• MongoDB Atlas account (or local MongoDB instance)

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/asna-154/Podcraft.git
cd Podcraft

2. Backend Setup

cd Backend
npm install

Create a .env file in the Backend folder:

PORT=5000
MONGO_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string
JWT_SECRET=your_jwt_secret_key
JWT_EXPIRE=24h
FRONTEND_URL=http://localhost:3000

Run the backend:

npm run dev

3. Frontend Setup

cd frontend/podcraft-frontend
npm install

Create a .env file in the podcraft-frontend folder (optional, defaults to localhost):

REACT_APP_API_URL=http://localhost:5000/api

Run the frontend:

npm start

The app will be available at http://localhost:3000.

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🔐 Environment Variables

Variable	Description
PORT	Backend server port (default: 5000)
MONGO_URI	MongoDB connection string
JWT_SECRET	Secret key used to sign JWT tokens
JWT_EXPIRE	JWT token expiry duration
FRONTEND_URL	Allowed origin for CORS
REACT_APP_API_URL	Base URL the frontend uses to call the backend API

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🔗 API Endpoints

Auth

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/api/auth/register	Register a new user
POST	/api/auth/login	Login user
GET	/api/auth/me	Get current logged-in user
PUT	/api/auth/update	Update account details
PUT	/api/auth/update-password	Update password
POST	/api/auth/logout	Logout user
DELETE	/api/auth/delete	Delete account

Episodes

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/api/episodes	Create a new episode
GET	/api/episodes	Get all episodes for logged-in user
GET	/api/episodes/:id	Get a single episode
PUT	/api/episodes/:id	Update an episode
DELETE	/api/episodes/:id	Delete an episode
POST	/api/episodes/:id/guests	Add a guest to an episode
PUT	/api/episodes/:id/guests/:guestId	Edit a guest
DELETE	/api/episodes/:id/guests/:guestId	Delete a guest
GET	/api/episodes/history	Get completed episode history

Research

Method	Endpoint	Description
POST	/api/research/generate/:episodeId	Generate research for an episode
POST	/api/research/refresh/:episodeId	Refresh research topics
GET	/api/research/:episodeId	Get research topics for an episode
GET	/api/research/:episodeId/bookmarks	Get bookmarked topics
PUT	/api/research/:researchId/bookmark	Bookmark/unbookmark a topic
PUT	/api/research/:researchId/reject	Reject a topic

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👥 Team

Name	Registration No.	Contribution
Asna Hammad	FA23-BDS-051	Web Dashboard Development
Awais Ashraf	FA23-BDS-053	Mobile App Development

Supervisor: Dr. Tehseen Riaz Abbasi Course: Software Engineering (CSC291) Institution: COMSATS University, Islamabad

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📄 License

This project was developed for academic purposes as part of a university course assignment.