CourseGenX-AI

Can't afford to buy courses, or don't have time to hunt for the best YouTube videos? Generate your own course with AI, customised to exactly the topics you want to master.

Give it a title and a list of units. The AI writes a syllabus — units broken into chapters — and for every chapter it finds a relevant YouTube lesson and writes a summary of it.

The deployed site is a demo. The landing page embeds a full, unedited recording of the working app and needs no environment variables at all — it builds and deploys clean out of the box. Add the keys below to switch the interactive app on; until then every app screen shows a demo notice instead of an error.

Features

• Google sign-in via NextAuth
• AI-generated course syllabus (units → chapters)
• A hand-picked YouTube video and AI summary per chapter
• Public course gallery
• Free credits per account, with an optional Stripe Pro subscription for unlimited generations
• Light/dark mode

Tech Stack

Next.js 14 (App Router) · React · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui · NextAuth · Prisma + PostgreSQL · TanStack Query · OpenAI · YouTube Data API · Unsplash · Stripe

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Environment Variables

Copy .env.example to .env and fill it in.

None of these are needed to deploy the landing page and demo video. They are only required to run the interactive course generator.

Required to run the app

Variable	What it is	Where to get it
DATABASE_URL	PostgreSQL connection string	Neon (free), Supabase, Vercel Postgres, or Railway. Append ?sslmode=require for hosted Postgres.
NEXTAUTH_SECRET	Signs session tokens	Generate: openssl rand -base64 32
NEXTAUTH_URL	Public origin, no trailing slash	http://localhost:3000 locally; your deployed URL in production. Optional on Vercel (falls back to VERCEL_URL).
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID	Google OAuth client	Google Cloud Console → Credentials → OAuth client ID → Web application
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET	Google OAuth secret	Same screen as above
OPENAI_API_KEY	Generates syllabus + summaries	platform.openai.com/api-keys — the account needs billing credit
YOUTUBE_API_KEY	Finds a video per chapter	Enable YouTube Data API v3, then create an API key

Optional

Variable	Effect when unset
OPENAI_MODEL	Defaults to gpt-4o-mini
UNSPLASH_API_KEY	Course covers fall back to a bundled placeholder. Get the "Access Key" at unsplash.com/oauth/applications
STRIPE_API_KEY	Pro upgrade UI is hidden and /api/stripe returns 503
STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET	Same as above — both Stripe variables are needed to enable subscriptions

Google OAuth redirect URI must be <NEXTAUTH_URL>/api/auth/callback/google. Add both your localhost and production URLs.

YouTube quota: each chapter costs 100 units against a default 10,000/day quota — roughly 100 chapters per day. A 403 from the API almost always means the quota is spent.

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Run Locally

git clone https://github.com/neeraj-gs/CourseGen-AI.git
cd CourseGen-AI
npm install
cp .env.example .env      # then fill in the values
npm run db:push           # creates the tables in your database
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. Check http://localhost:3000/api/health to confirm the database is reachable and no required variables are missing.

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Deploy to Vercel

The demo site — no configuration

1. Push this repo to GitHub.
2. New Project in Vercel → import the repo.
3. Deploy. That's it — no environment variables required.

Leave Root Directory at the repo root — the Next.js app lives there.

vercel.json pins "framework": "nextjs" on purpose. A project imported while the app still sat in a coursegen-ai/ subdirectory gets its framework preset saved as null, and that value is not re-detected when the app later moves. A null preset builds the project as "Other": it runs npm run build, ignores .next/, and publishes public/ as a static folder — so /CourseGenX-Demo.mp4 serves fine while / and every route return 404: NOT_FOUND, with a completely green build log. Pinning it in vercel.json overrides the stored setting and makes the repo self-describing.

The landing page is statically prerendered, and the demo video only downloads when a visitor presses play.

Switching the full app on

5. Add every variable from the required table above.
6. Set NEXTAUTH_URL to the real deployment URL and add <url>/api/auth/callback/google to your Google OAuth client, then redeploy.
7. Create the tables against your production database:

   DATABASE_URL="<your production url>" npx prisma db push

8. Visit /api/health on the deployed URL — it should return {"status":"ok"}.

Stripe (optional): add a webhook endpoint at <your-url>/api/webhook for the events checkout.session.completed, invoice.payment_succeeded, customer.subscription.updated, customer.subscription.deleted, then set STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET.

Function timeouts

Course generation calls OpenAI several times, so /api/course/createChapters and /api/chapter/getInfo declare maxDuration = 60. That is the ceiling on Vercel's Hobby plan; Pro allows up to 300s. Keeping courses to 3–8 units comfortably fits inside 60s.

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Deploy with Docker

docker build -t coursegen-ai .
docker run -p 3000:3000 --env-file .env coursegen-ai

The Dockerfile builds with output: 'standalone' (enabled by DOCKER_BUILD=1) and runs as a non-root user.

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Screenshots

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Coming Soon

• AI quiz at the end of each lesson
• AI-generated Q&A for reference
• Advanced lessons for specific sub-sections