Access To Food

A community platform connecting people with food resources in the St. Louis area — pantry locators, distribution events, SNAP guidance, an AI food-access assistant, and tools for volunteers and pantry staff. Part of the Access To initiative.

Live site: https://food.cotrackpro.com

Features

• Pantry directory & map — browse partner food pantries with live inventory status, backed by Firestore
• Distribution events — upcoming mobile markets, pop-up pantries, and drive-thru distributions
• AI Assistant — a Claude-powered chat assistant that can search the pantry database to answer "where can I get food near me?"
• Inventory Scanner — pantry staff photograph shelves and Claude vision estimates stock levels by category
• SNAP eligibility guide — quick income-based eligibility estimate and application resources
• Volunteer & donate — shift signups and donation information
• Sort the Shift — a volunteer-training game: sort donations into the right bins, flag spoiled items, post your meals-provided score to a leaderboard
• Command Center dashboard — at-a-glance pantry status, staffing, and risk overview

Architecture

• Frontend: Vite + React 19 + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS 4, a single-page app served statically by Vercel (BrowserRouter with an SPA rewrite in vercel.json)
• AI backend: two Vercel serverless functions — api/assistant.ts (chat with a pantry-search tool loop) and api/scan.ts (vision inventory analysis). The ANTHROPIC_API_KEY lives only in these functions; it is never embedded in the client bundle, and CI fails if it ever appears there.
• Data: Firebase Firestore, accessed directly from the browser and guarded by firestore.rules (public read for pantries/events; writes require staff/admin roles)
• Game backend: sortshift-backend/ is a standalone AWS CDK app (API Gateway + Lambda + DynamoDB) with HMAC-signed single-use shift tokens, server-side plausibility checks, and no PII (initials only). Deploy it per its own README, then point the SPA at it with VITE_SORTSHIFT_API_URL; without it the game runs in practice mode.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• npm
• Vercel CLI (npm i -g vercel) for full-stack local development

Installation

git clone https://github.com/dougdevitre/access-to-food.git
cd access-to-food
npm install
cp .env.example .env   # then fill in your keys

Development

Two ways to run locally:

# UI-only (fast): plain Vite on http://localhost:3000.
# /api/* is not served, so the Assistant and Scanner show their
# "backend not configured" state — fine for working on pages and styling.
npm run dev

# Full stack: serves the SPA *and* the /api functions using the
# ANTHROPIC_API_KEY from .env (or `vercel env pull`).
vercel dev

Other scripts: npm run lint (typecheck), npm run build, npm run preview, npm run seed.

Environment Variables

Variable	Where it lives	Purpose
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	Server only — Vercel dashboard / .env for vercel dev	Claude API access for /api/assistant and /api/scan. Never prefix with VITE_ or add to vite.config.ts — that would publish it in the bundle.
VITE_GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY	Build-time, embedded in the bundle by design	Google Maps for the pantry/event maps. Restrict by HTTP referrer in the Google Cloud console.
VITE_SORTSHIFT_API_URL	Build-time, embedded in the bundle by design	Base URL of the deployed Sort the Shift API (CDK ApiUrl output). Unset = practice mode.
GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS	Local only, for npm run seed	Path to a Firebase service-account JSON.

Seeding Sample Data

Firestore rules only allow staff/admin writes to pantries and events, so seeding uses the Firebase Admin SDK:

1. Firebase console → Project settings → Service accounts → Generate new private key, save as serviceAccount.json in the repo root (gitignored).
2. export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=./serviceAccount.json
3. npm run seed (add -- --force to seed non-empty collections)

This writes ~10 St. Louis-area pantries and 6 upcoming events matching the firestore.rules schema.

Deployment

The app deploys to Vercel (static build + serverless functions). After connecting the repo or running vercel deploy:

1. Add ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (and optionally VITE_GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY) in Project → Settings → Environment Variables, then redeploy.
2. Deploy Firestore rules when they change: firebase deploy --only firestore:rules.

CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml) typechecks, builds, and asserts the Anthropic key/SDK never reaches dist/ on every PR and push to main. No secrets are needed at build time.

Known Limitations

• The app has no sign-in flow yet, so Firestore writes gated on staff/admin roles (pantry updates, inventory-scan saves) will be denied until authentication is added. Public reads (pantries, events) work for everyone.
• Volunteer signups and donation flows are UI-only demos — they don't persist yet.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request.

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.

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Part of the Access To civic tech initiative — open-source tools for community access to justice, health, housing, and services.