👩‍💻 StorySparkAI is an open-source platform designed for creative minds to generate and share multiple story variations from a single prompt. Perfect for writers, creators, and enthusiasts exploring AI-powered storytelling!

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• About 🚀
• Features 💪
• Local development (monorepo)
• Environment variables
• Contributing 👨‍💻
• Contributors 🤝
• Maintainers
• License
• Support 🙏

About 🚀

• story-spark-ai - Website
• StorySparkAi is an open-source platform designed to empower creative minds by generating and showcasing AI-crafted stories from user prompts in a simple, engaging way.
• With StorySparkAi, users can input an idea, explore multiple story variations, save their favorites, and leverage AI analysis to enhance their creative writing journey.

Features 💪

• AI-Powered Story Generation: Create unique stories instantly using advanced AI models.
• Prompt-Based Storytelling: Simply provide a prompt or idea and watch it come to life.
• Story Bookmarks/History: Save your favorite generated stories and revisit your past creations.
• AI Analysis Capabilities: Get AI insights, summaries, and critiques of your stories.
• Creative Writing Assistance: Overcome writer's block with intelligent suggestions and variations.
• Responsive User Experience: Enjoy a seamless and beautiful interface across all devices.

Local development (monorepo)

Prerequisites: Node.js 18.18+, npm 9+, MongoDB URI for the API.

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/<your-github-username>/story-spark-ai.git
   cd story-spark-ai

2. Install dependencies (single install at the repo root — npm workspaces)

   npm install

3. Environment files

   • Copy backend/.env.example → backend/.env and fill in all values (see Environment variables).

• Copy frontend/.env.example → frontend/.env and set VITE_BASE_URL to your API base URL (e.g. http://localhost:5000/api/v1 when the backend runs on port 5000). Optionally set VITE_SOCKET_URL for real-time notifications; the frontend uses your logged-in access token to join the notification room.

Never commit backend/.env or frontend/.env. Only .env.example files belong in git.

4. First-Time Setup (Admin Seeding)

   Before starting the server for the first time, you must create an admin user:

   cd backend
   npx ts-node scripts/seed-admin.ts

   Make sure ADMIN_EMAIL and ADMIN_PASSWORD are set in your backend/.env file.

5. Run apps

   • Both (two terminals or one combined process):

     npm run dev

   • Backend only: npm run dev:backend — API (default port 5000 if PORT is unset).

   • Frontend only: npm run dev:frontend — Vite dev server on http://localhost:4001

6. Production builds

   npm run build
   npm run start:backend    # requires `npm run build:backend` first
   npm run start:frontend   # serves built static app (preview)

Deploying on Vercel

Use two Vercel projects from this monorepo:

Project	Root directory	Example domain
Frontend	frontend	storysparkai.vercel.app
Backend API	backend	apistorysparkai.vercel.app

Frontend environment variables (redeploy after changing):

• VITE_BASE_URL = https://<your-api>.vercel.app/api/v1
• VITE_SOCKET_URL = https://notification-socket-io.onrender.com (or your own persistent Node host)
• Do not point VITE_SOCKET_URL at your Vercel API URL — Vercel serverless cannot run Socket.IO, which causes endless /socket.io/ 404 logs.

Backend environment variables: set DATABASE_URL, JWT secrets, AI keys, and CORS_ORIGINS including https://storysparkai.vercel.app.

Git: Use a single repository root (one .git folder). Do not nest another .git inside frontend/ or backend/.

Environment variables

After cloning, create your env files from the examples in the repo:

cp backend/.env.example backend/.env
cp frontend/.env.example frontend/.env

Backend (backend/.env)

Variable	Required	Description
DATABASE_URL	Yes	MongoDB connection string (local or Atlas)
PORT	No	API port (default 5000)
NODE_ENV	No	development or production
CORS_ORIGINS	No	Comma-separated frontend URLs (e.g. http://localhost:4001)
SALT_ROUNDS	Yes	Bcrypt cost factor (e.g. 10)
JWT_SECRET	Yes	Access token signing secret
JWT_REFRESH_SECRET	Yes	Refresh token signing secret
JWT_EXPIRES_IN	Yes	Access token lifetime (e.g. 60d)
JWT_REFRESH_EXPIRES_IN	Yes	Refresh token lifetime (e.g. 120d)
DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASSWORD	Yes	Initial admin password on seed
OPEN_AI_KEY	For OpenAI	OpenAI API key
GEMINI_API_KEY	For Gemini	Google AI Studio key
UNSPLASH_KEY_API	For images	Unsplash Access Key
UNSPLASH_KEY_API_SECRET	For images	Unsplash secret
VERIFY_EMAIL	For email	SMTP sender address
VERIFY_PASSWORD	For email	SMTP password or app password
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID	For login with google	https://console.cloud.google.com
CORS_ORIGINS	For resolve cors

Frontend (frontend/.env)

Variable	Required	Description
VITE_BASE_URL	Yes	API base URL, e.g. http://localhost:5000/api/v1
VITE_SOCKET_URL	No	Socket.IO URL for real-time notifications (optional)
VITE_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID	Yes	https://console.cloud.google.com

Contributing workflow

1. Fork the repository and clone your fork.
2. Create a branch: git checkout -b your-feature-branch
3. Install with npm install at the repo root, configure .env files, then git add, git commit, git push, and open a pull request.

Contributing 👨‍💻

Contributions make the open source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create.
Any contributions you make are truly appreciated!

Contributors 🤝

Thanks to everyone who has helped build Story Spark AI. This grid updates automatically from GitHub contributors.

_{Made with contrib.rocks}

Maintainers

Roni Sarkar @ronisarkarexe

License

This project is licensed under MIT.

Support 🙏

Thank you for contributing to our open-source project! We appreciate your support 🚀
Don't forget to leave a star ⭐