🏠 StayMate — AI-Powered Rent & Flatmate Finder

Full-stack MERN application with AI compatibility scoring, real-time chat, and smart notifications.

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✨ Features

Feature	Description
🤖 AI Matching	Gemini 1.5 Flash computes 0-100 compatibility score for every tenant-listing pair
💬 Real-time Chat	Socket.io powered chat with typing indicators, seen receipts, and presence
📧 Email Notifications	Nodemailer HTML emails for interest, acceptance, and verification
🔐 Auth	JWT + Google OAuth with email verification
☁️ Image Upload	Cloudinary with automatic optimization
👤 3 User Roles	Owner · Tenant · Admin
📱 Responsive	Mobile-first design

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• MongoDB Atlas account
• Cloudinary account
• Google Cloud Console (OAuth)
• Gemini API key
• Gmail SMTP app password

Setup

1. Clone & Install

# Install client dependencies
cd client
npm install

# Install server dependencies
cd ../server
npm install --legacy-peer-deps

2. Environment Variables

Server — copy server/.env.example to server/.env and fill in:

• MONGODB_URI — MongoDB Atlas connection string
• JWT_SECRET — any random 32+ char string
• JWT_REFRESH_SECRET — another random 32+ char string
• GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID + GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET — from Google Cloud Console
• CLOUDINARY_* — from Cloudinary dashboard
• GEMINI_API_KEY — from Google AI Studio
• EMAIL_USER + EMAIL_PASS — Gmail + App Password

Client — copy client/.env.example to client/.env (defaults work for local dev)

3. Run Locally

# Terminal 1 — Backend
cd server
npm run dev

# Terminal 2 — Frontend  
cd client
npm run dev

App runs at: https://stay-mate-five.vercel.app/
API runs at: https://staymate-backend-vijh.onrender.com

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📁 Project Structure

StayMate/
├── client/          # React 18 + Vite frontend
│   └── src/
│       ├── components/   # Reusable UI components
│       ├── pages/        # Route pages (public/auth/owner/tenant/admin)
│       ├── store/        # Zustand global state
│       ├── hooks/        # Custom React hooks
│       ├── services/     # Axios API client
│       └── index.css     # Design system (CSS variables + components)
└── server/          # Node.js + Express backend
    └── src/
        ├── models/       # Mongoose schemas
        ├── controllers/  # Business logic
        ├── routes/       # Express routes
        ├── middlewares/  # Auth, role, upload
        ├── services/     # AI, email, socket
        └── config/       # DB, Cloudinary, Passport, Socket.io

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🎨 Color Palette

Token	Color	Usage
Primary	#4C5CE7	Buttons, CTAs, active states
Secondary	#08B094	Match badges, success states
Accent	#F7F86F	Tags, highlights
Dark	#0F172A	Navbar, dark sections

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🔗 Tech Stack

Frontend: React 18 · Vite · React Router v6 · Zustand · Axios · Socket.io-client · Framer Motion · Lucide React
Backend: Node.js · Express · Mongoose · Socket.io · JWT · Passport.js
Database: MongoDB Atlas
AI: Google Gemini 1.5 Flash
Storage: Cloudinary
Email: Nodemailer (Gmail SMTP)
Auth: JWT + Google OAuth 2.0

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🌐 Deployment

Service	Platform
Frontend	Vercel
Backend	Render
Database	MongoDB Atlas
Images	Cloudinary

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Built with ❤️ as part of the Unthinkable full-stack portfolio.