AcademiaSync

The research workspace where a team's manuscript, sources, data and collaborators stay in sync.

This is the v2 rebuild. v1 kept all data in server memory and faked authentication, so accounts and documents disappeared on every restart. v2 is built on one rule: one system per job, one source of truth per piece of data, and nothing that fakes success.

Stack

Layer	Choice
App	Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, Tailwind CSS 4
Motion	Motion (motion/react), respecting reduced-motion settings
Auth	Supabase Auth: Google, Microsoft, and email links with a 6-digit code
Database	Supabase Postgres with row-level security on every table
Live editing	Liveblocks + Yjs through Tiptap; access decided by the database

What's in this phase

• Animated landing page with a live preview of co-writing, citations and review flags
• Sign-in with Google, Microsoft or a magic link, with session refresh in src/proxy.ts
• Signed-in workspace: project list, create project, project overview, add manuscripts
• Database schema with row-level security (supabase/migrations)
• Live editor: real-time co-writing with cursors, presence, comments and version history
• Reference library per project: add sources by DOI (Crossref) or by hand, search, copy APA references, export BibTeX
• In-text citations from the editor (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+K) and a live bibliography panel
• Paste a DOI, arXiv or PubMed link into a manuscript and it becomes a source and a citation
• Hover cards on citations: the paper, its abstract, the team's notes and links to the library
• Ctrl/Cmd+K palette to jump to any project, manuscript or source, or run a command
• Follow a collaborator through the manuscript, with their avatar in the margin beside where they are
• A sample project with five real papers and a guided tour of the editor
• CI that lints, type-checks, tests and builds every pull request

Set up

1. Create a project at supabase.com.
2. Run the migrations in supabase/migrations/, in filename order (SQL editor, or npx supabase db push once linked).
3. In Authentication → URL configuration, set the site URL and add http://localhost:3000/auth/callback (and your production URL) to the redirect URLs.
4. Optional: enable the Google and Azure (Microsoft) providers under Authentication → Providers. Email magic links work without this.
5. Before inviting real users, add your own email service under Authentication → Emails → SMTP settings (Resend, Postmark, SendGrid…). Supabase's built-in sender only delivers to members of your Supabase organization and is heavily rate-limited. Then, under Authentication → Emails → Templates, paste supabase/templates/magic-link.html into Magic link and supabase/templates/confirm-signup.html into Confirm signup. They add the 6-digit code and a link to /auth/confirm, which works in any browser and can't be used up by a university mail scanner. Keep Email OTP length at 6.
6. Create a free Liveblocks project and copy its secret key.
7. Copy .env.example to .env.local and fill in the project URL, publishable key and Liveblocks secret key. In production, also set NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL to the public address so sign-in links point there.
8. Install and run:

npm install
npm run dev

To work without a Liveblocks account, run the app inside the local Liveblocks dev server: npx liveblocks dev -c "npm run dev".

Scripts

Command	What it does
npm run dev	Start the dev server on port 3000
npm run build	Production build
npm run lint	ESLint
npm run typecheck	Generate route types and run TypeScript
npm test	Unit tests (vitest)

Project layout

src/
  app/
    page.tsx                 landing page
    (auth)/sign-in/          sign-in screen and server actions
    auth/callback, sign-out  session routes
    (app)/projects/          signed-in workspace
  components/
    landing/                 landing page sections
    app/                     workspace UI
    motion/                  shared animation primitives
  lib/supabase/              browser, server and proxy clients, database types
  proxy.ts                   refreshes sessions, guards signed-in pages
supabase/migrations/         schema and row-level security