OpenFunds

AI grant matching with self-healing scrapers.

OpenFunds crawls foundations, research offices, conference CFPs, and residencies — then ranks every deadline against your profile. When page layouts drift, the pipeline detects broken selectors and can heal them automatically via Bright Data.

Built for WeMakeDevs · Into the Scrape-Verse (August 2026).

Live demo: openfunds.ronakpaul.com

Features

• Multi-source scraping — scheduled crawls of grant and opportunity listings
• Drift detection & self-heal — detects missing fields / empty results and repairs selectors via Bright Data (collector ID stays stable)
• AI profile matching — ranks grants against your research profile (Pinecone + OpenRouter, with local fallbacks)
• Live scraper health — real-time run logs over SSE on the Scraper Health dashboard
• Knowledge base — inspect scraped knowledge and source status
• Deadlines feed — upcoming opportunities in one place
• Heal demo target — target/ ships Meridian Foundation, a controllable fake funder so you can break and heal layouts on purpose
• Graceful fallbacks — runs in local-fallback mode when Bright Data, Pinecone, or OpenRouter are unset

Architecture

flowchart LR
  Client["client Vite React"] -->|"/api proxy"| Server["server Express"]
  Target["target Meridian Foundation"] -.->|"scrape / heal demo"| Server
  Server --> MongoDB
  Server --> BrightData
  Server --> Pinecone
  Server --> OpenRouter

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Package	Role
client/	React dashboard + marketing site (Vite)
server/	Express API, scraping pipeline, integrations
target/	Meridian Foundation — demo site with flipable markers for self-heal demos

More detail: client/README.md · server/README.md

Tech stack

Client — React 19, TypeScript, Vite 8, Tailwind CSS 4, TanStack Query, React Router, Framer Motion, Three.js

Server — Express, TypeScript, MongoDB / Mongoose, Cheerio, node-cron, Zod

Target — React 19, Vite, Tailwind (standalone Meridian Foundation site)

Integrations — Bright Data (Scraper Studio), Pinecone (vectors), OpenRouter (LLM)

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• MongoDB locally, or an Atlas connection string
• Optional: Bright Data, Pinecone, and OpenRouter API keys (the app works without them in fallback mode)

Quick start

Clone the repo, then start the API and the client in two terminals.

1. API

cd server
cp .env.example .env
# edit MONGODB_URI if needed
npm install
npm run seed   # requires a running MongoDB
npm run dev

API: http://localhost:4000

Without local MongoDB you can still smoke-test the API:

cd server && npm run smoke

2. Client

cd client
cp .env.example .env   # optional — defaults work for local dev
npm install
npm run dev

App: http://localhost:5173

In development the client calls relative /api paths. Vite proxies them to VITE_API_PROXY (http://localhost:4000 by default), so no CORS setup is needed for local work.

3. Heal demo target (optional)

For self-heal demos, run Meridian Foundation and point a source at it:

cd target
npm install
npm run dev

Environment

Server (server/.env.example)

Variable	Required	Notes
MONGODB_URI	Yes	e.g. mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/openfunds
PORT	No	Default 4000
CLIENT_ORIGIN	No	Default http://localhost:5173
BRIGHTDATA_API_TOKEN	No	Leave blank for local-fallback scraping
BRIGHTDATA_UNLOCKER_ZONE	No	Mid-tier unlocker zone name
PINECONE_API_KEY	No	Vector matching; falls back locally if unset
PINECONE_INDEX	No	Default openfunds-grants
OPENROUTER_API_KEY	No	LLM matching / agent features
SCRAPE_ENABLED	No	Default true
SCRAPE_CRON	No	Default */15 * * * *
SCRAPE_MAX_ROWS	No	Cap rows per scrape; default 12

Client (client/.env.example)

Variable	Required	Notes
VITE_API_PROXY	No	Dev proxy target; default http://localhost:4000
VITE_API_URL	No	Set to the deployed API origin for production builds (no trailing slash)

Scripts

Server

Script	Description
npm run dev	Dev server with hot reload (tsx watch)
npm run build	Compile TypeScript to dist/
npm start	Run the compiled server
npm run seed	Seed MongoDB with sample data
npm run smoke	In-memory API smoke suite (no local MongoDB required)
npm run typecheck	Type-check without emitting

Client

Script	Description
npm run dev	Vite dev server with /api proxy
npm run build	Type-check + production build
npm run lint	ESLint
npm run preview	Serve the production build

Target

Script	Description
npm run dev	Vite dev server for Meridian Foundation
npm run build	Production build
npm run preview	Serve the production build

Project structure

.
├── client/                 # Vite + React frontend
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/     # UI, dashboard, marketing, 3D
│       ├── lib/            # api, queries, types, SSE helpers
│       └── pages/          # Home + dashboard screens
├── server/                 # Express + TypeScript API
│   └── src/
│       ├── integrations/   # Bright Data, Pinecone, OpenRouter
│       ├── jobs/           # Cron scraper scheduler
│       ├── models/         # Mongoose models
│       └── modules/        # agent, analytics, grants, knowledge,
│                           # matching, profile, runs, scraping,
│                           # settings, sources
└── target/                 # Meridian Foundation (heal demo site)
    └── src/
        ├── components/
        ├── data/           # opportunities + layout markers
        └── pages/          # listing + detail

Dashboard

Route	Screen
/dashboard	Overview
/dashboard/onboarding	Profile onboarding
/dashboard/deadlines	Deadlines feed
/dashboard/profile	Matched profile
/dashboard/scraper-health	Scraper health + live runs
/dashboard/knowledge	Knowledge base
/dashboard/digest	Digest settings
/dashboard/settings	Integrations & settings
/dashboard/help	Help

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup expectations, branch naming, and PR checks.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

Acknowledgments

Parts of the UI and application logic were shaped with help from coding agents and AI brainstorming sessions.

License

MIT © 2026 Ronak Pal