Saathi — Find your people. On campus.

Saathi is an exclusive social coordination platform built for IIT Roorkee students. Whether you are looking for a travel companion to the railway station, a study group for end-sems, or friends to play badminton with, Saathi helps you find your circle.

✨ Features

• IITR Exclusive: Strictly gated. Only @*.iitr.ac.in emails are allowed to register or login.
• Smart Duplicate Prevention: Before posting an activity, the platform checks for similar active circles (same time + same destination) to encourage pooling instead of fragmentation.
• Private Group Chats: Approved members get access to a real-time, private chat room for coordination.
• Smart Suggestions: Suggests activities based on your Bhawan/Hostel, Department, Year, and Interests.
• Zero-Config Deployment: 100% Serverless architecture. The entire application runs on the client and directly interfaces securely with Firebase.

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Frontend: React 18, Vite, TypeScript
• Styling: Tailwind CSS v4, Lucide Icons, Framer Motion
• Backend / Database: Firebase (Auth, Firestore)
• Deployment Ready: Configured for Vercel and Netlify (SPA routing included)

🚀 Local Setup

1. Install Dependencies

   npm install

2. Configure Environment Variables Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your Firebase configuration keys:

   cp .env.example .env

3. Start the Development Server

   npm run dev

   The app will be running at http://localhost:5173.

🌐 Deployment (Vercel / Netlify)

This project is perfectly optimized for free-tier deployments on Vercel or Netlify. It uses a purely static SPA architecture with no backend server required.

Steps to Deploy:

1. Push this repository to GitHub.
2. Go to Vercel or Netlify and import the repository.
3. The platform will automatically detect Vite as the framework.
4. Important: Add all the VITE_FIREBASE_* environment variables (found in .env.example) to your Vercel/Netlify project settings before deploying.
5. In your Firebase Console, go to Authentication > Settings > Authorized Domains and add your new Vercel/Netlify domain (e.g., saathi.vercel.app) so Google Login works.
6. Deploy!

Note: Custom routing rules for SPAs are already included in the vercel.json and netlify.toml files in this repository.

🔒 Security & Firebase Rules

All business logic and security rules are enforced at the Firestore level. The firestore.rules file ensures that:

• Users can only edit their own profiles.
• Only the host can edit or delete an activity.
• Only approved members can read or write to an activity's private group chat.
• All documents enforce the @*.iitr.ac.in email restriction on writes.