FlashMind 🔮

Turn dense lecture PDFs or pasted notes into AI-generated flashcards you can study immediately. The project pairs a lightweight Vite + React frontend with an Express backend that calls Google’s Gemini models to build question/answer pairs.

Features

• Drag-and-drop PDF upload or plain text paste area with rich Tailwind styling.
• Smart flashcard generation via POST /generate, handling both JSON and multipart bodies.
• Responsive 2-column flashcard grid with reveal-on-click answers.
• Backend PDF text extraction powered by pdfjs-dist and Gemini 2.5 Flash.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Vite, React 19, Tailwind CSS 3, Fetch API.
• Backend: Node.js + Express, google-generative-ai, express-fileupload, pdfjs-dist.

Project Structure

FlashMind/
├── backend/        # Express API that talks to Gemini and extracts PDF text
├── frontend/       # Vite + React single-page interface
└── LICENSE         # MIT License

Requirements

• Node.js 20+
• npm 10+
• A valid Google Gemini API key (GEMINI_API_KEY) with access to gemini-2.5-flash.

Backend Setup (http://localhost:3000)

1. cd backend
2. npm install
3. Create a .env file and add your key:

   GEMINI_API_KEY=your-key-here
   

4. Start the server:

   node server.js
   

   The server registers POST /generate and logs any raw Gemini output for troubleshooting.

Frontend Setup (http://localhost:5173)

1. cd frontend
2. npm install
3. npm run dev
4. Open the printed Vite URL (defaults to http://localhost:5173). Use the UI to upload a PDF or paste text, then click Generate Flashcards. The app will call http://localhost:3000/generate.

API Contract

• Endpoint: POST http://localhost:3000/generate
• Request body:
  • JSON: { "text": "plain note content" }
  • Multipart: pdf file field (PDF up to ~20 MB)
• Response: [{ "question": "string", "answer": "string" }, ... ]
• On errors, the backend returns 500 { "error": "Generation failed" }.

Pull Requests Welcome!

• Fork the repo, create a feature branch, and submit changes via pull request.
• Ensure your code follows the existing style and passes basic linting.
• Include a brief description of the changes and any related issue numbers.

License

MIT © 2025 Sameer Shahed