Pulse

This repository is a coding challenge for engineering candidates. It is not intended for production use.

Pulse is a small internal customer-feedback inbox for support teams. Sign in, browse incoming feedback across email, chat, and app-store channels, open an item to read the full message and customer details, resolve or reopen it, and generate a quick AI summary of any message. The app also includes assignment routing, priority and due-date fields, customer profile history, internal notes, a small metrics panel, search, and CSV export.

Requirements

• Node 20+
• npm

Setup

1. Install dependencies (installs both the server and web packages):

   npm install

2. Create the environment files from the examples:

   cp server/.env.example server/.env
   cp web/.env.example web/.env

   The defaults run the app fully offline — the Summarize feature uses a built-in canned summarizer (FAKE_LLM=true), so no API key is required.

3. Seed the database with sample users, customers, and feedback:

   npm run seed

4. Start the API and the web app together:

   npm run dev

   • API: http://localhost:4000
   • Web: http://localhost:5173

Open the web app in your browser and sign in.

Test login

• Email: alice@pulse.test
• Password: password123

Project layout

• server/ — Node + Express + TypeScript API backed by SQLite (better-sqlite3).
• web/ — React + TypeScript single-page app built with Vite.

Optional: live summaries

To use a real model for the Summarize feature, set the following in server/.env:

FAKE_LLM=false
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...