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• Setup Work Environment: Set up your development environment, including access to any APIs, databases, or servers needed.
• Start Coding: Begin coding according to the project plan. Use version control systems like GitHub to manage code changes and collaboration.
• Regular Check-Ins: Have daily stand-ups or check-ins to update on progress, discuss challenges, and adjust plans as necessary.

▸ Setup Work Environment

To ensure a consistent development environment across the team, all contributors must configure the following prerequisites:

• Runtime Environment: Install Node.js and NPM. Run npm install in the root directory to initialize the required project dependencies (e.g., Express.js, Puppeteer, Firebase Admin SDK).
• Environment Variables: Duplicate the .env.example file to create a local .env file. You will need to populate:
  • PROJECT_ID and LOCATION for Google Cloud Vertex AI (Gemini API) authentication.
  • IG_USERNAME and IG_PASSWORD for the Instagram data scraper.
• Database & API Integrations:
  • Firebase Admin: Generate a Firebase service account private key from the Firebase Console and save it as config/firebase-service-account.json. (Note: This file is intentionally .gitignored to prevent credential leaks).
  • Core API: The backend API defaults to running via a local Express server on port 3000.

▸ Start Coding

The repository is strictly version-controlled via GitHub (

main branch) and is segmented into distinct architectural layers:

• Backend Server (server/): Houses the primary Express.js API, logically organized into routes/, controllers/, and models/.
• Core Services (services/): Manages external third-party logic, notably the AI integration within gemini.js.
• Data Pipelines (scripts/ & tools/): Contains standalone automation tools, such as scrape-instagram.js for scheduled data ingestion and seed-events.js for database population.
• Version Control Guidelines: When developing, create feature branches off main. Ensure that raw ingested data (data/images/), caching directories (.user_data/), and environment configs remain excluded from commits as per the .gitignore policy.

▸ Regular Check-Ins

To maintain alignment across the backend API, the web scrapers, and the frontend integrations, the team will adhere to the following sync cadence:

• Daily Stand-Ups: Brief daily updates to report on individual progress, surface technical blockers (e.g., Instagram scraper rate-limits or Vertex AI prompt issues), and coordinate on JSON/database schema changes.