fauvault

An open-source study and exam-prep web app for university courses. Each course bundles lecture summaries, interactive quizzes, flashcards, an exam-prep mode, and a community leaderboard — so studying for finals is active, not passive.

Live: fauvault.space

Built originally for FAU courses, but the platform is course-agnostic — anyone can add their own course (see Contributing).

 

Features

• Lectures — readable, Markdown-rendered concept summaries per lecture, with LaTeX math support (KaTeX) for inline $…$ and block $$…$$ formulas.
• Quizzes — single- and multiple-correct questions with explanations and LaTeX-rendered math.
• Flashcards — spaced front/back cards with progress tracking.
• Exam-prep mode — focused review built from the highest-yield material.
• Leaderboard — per-course ranking to keep a study group motivated.
• Accounts — username/password auth with secure sessions; guest access for read-only browsing of most pages.

Tech stack

• Framework: Next.js 15 (App Router, React 19, Turbopack)
• Database: Neon serverless Postgres
• Auth: jose JWT sessions + bcryptjs
• Rate limiting: Upstash Redis
• UI: Tailwind CSS v4, shadcn/ui + Radix, lucide-react
• Testing: Vitest
• Hosting: Vercel

Getting started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 24+ (see .nvmrc — nvm use to match)
• A Neon Postgres database (free tier works)
• Optionally, an Upstash Redis database for rate limiting

Setup

# 1. Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/onur-tellioglu/fauvault.git
cd fauvault
npm install

# 2. Configure environment
cp .env.example .env.local
#   then edit .env.local with your DATABASE_URL, JWT_SECRET, and Upstash creds

# 3. Apply database migrations (run each file against your database, in order)
#    e.g. with psql:
psql "$DATABASE_URL" -f src/lib/schema.sql
for f in migrations/0*.sql; do psql "$DATABASE_URL" -f "$f"; done

# 4. Run the dev server
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000.

Environment variables

See .env.example for the full list. Required: DATABASE_URL, JWT_SECRET. Recommended for production: UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL, UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN.

Scripts

Command	Description
npm run dev	Start the dev server (Turbopack)
npm run build	Production build
npm run start	Serve the production build
npm run lint	Run ESLint
npx vitest	Run the test suite

Project structure

src/
  app/            Next.js App Router (routes, API handlers)
    [course]/     Per-course pages: lecture, study, quiz, flashcard, exam-prep, leaderboard
    api/          Route handlers: auth, progress, leaderboard, tips, ...
  components/     UI components (layout, quiz, shadcn)
  lib/
    courses.ts    Course registry — register new courses here
    content-*.ts  Per-course content (lectures, questions, flashcards)
    types.ts      Content/Lecture/Question/Flashcard types
    auth.ts       Session creation/verification
    db.ts         Neon client
    ratelimit.ts  Upstash rate limiter
migrations/       SQL migrations (apply in order)

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — bug fixes, features, and new courses. Adding a course is the most impactful way to help: see CONTRIBUTING.md for the content schema and a step-by-step guide.

Please note: course content must be your own original study material. Never commit copyrighted source lecture slides or PDFs to this repository.

License

• Source code: AGPL-3.0 — copyleft; distributed or network-hosted forks must release their full source under the same license.
• Course content (src/lib/content-*.ts): CC BY-SA 4.0

See LICENSE for details.