Second Brain - A Smart Content Organizer

Introduction

In today's digital era, information is scattered across multiple platforms—Twitter threads, YouTube videos, Google Docs, and more. We often save links, but they get lost in endless bookmarks, notes, or browser tabs. Second Brain is here to solve that problem by providing a centralized, intelligent knowledge management system.

Key Features

• Unified Content Collection

  • Save links from Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs, and more.
  • Automatically extract metadata, thumbnails, and key insights for each saved resource.

• Visual Organization with Card-Based UI

  • Easily navigate and manage saved content.

• Privacy & Offline Access

  • Users can self-host their instance to keep control over their data.
  • Support for offline access to previously fetched content.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: React (TypeScript) + TailwindCSS
• Backend: Node.js + Express.js
• Database: MongoDB

Setup Instructions

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/second-brain.git
cd second-brain

2. Configure URLs

Backend Setup

Modify the CORS middleware in backend/index.ts to set the correct frontend URL:

app.use(cors({
    origin: "https://second-brain-rust.vercel.app", // add your frontend url here 
    credentials: true,
}));

Frontend Setup

Update the backend URL in frontend/config.ts:

export const Backend_URL = "/api";

3. Install Dependencies

Frontend

cd frontend
npm install

Backend

cd backend
npm install

4. Set Up Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the backend directory based on .env.example and set the required values:

JWT_SECRET=
MongoUrl=

5. Run the Project

Frontend

npm run dev

Backend

npm run dev

Contributing

Feel free to submit issues or open pull requests to improve Second Brain!