Ability Compass is a full-stack child-development records and reporting system built with React, Express, Groq AI, local JSON persistence, PDF generation, and SMTP-based report mailing.

The main intention of this project is to move beyond a basic chatbot and build a practical care-team workspace. Parents, teachers, and mentors can record everyday observations, coordinate activities, generate safe AI-assisted developmental insights, and share confidential weekly reports with the right people.

Many child-development tools stop at either note-taking or AI chat. Ability Compass combines both into a structured workflow:

Store child profiles and care-team contacts.

Capture observations from parents, teachers, and mentors.

Use Groq AI to summarize observations into safe, non-diagnostic guidance.

Generate confidential weekly development reports.

Download the report as a PDF.

Mail the report to selected care-team recipients.

Keep a local database for demo and interview use without requiring Firebase or Supabase setup.

The project is designed as an interview-ready full-stack application that demonstrates frontend UI design, backend API development, persistence, AI integration, PDF generation, and responsible handling of sensitive child-related information.

Login and signup flow for Parent, Teacher, and Mentor roles.

Role-based dashboard with different workflow suggestions.

Child profile management.

Parent, teacher, and mentor contact management.

Calendar planning for activities, observations, meetings, and assessments.

AI-assisted observation analysis using Groq.

Local fallback analysis when the Groq API key is missing or unavailable.

Confidential weekly report generation.

Backend-generated PDF download.

SMTP email delivery for reports.

Demo outbox fallback when SMTP is not configured.

JSON file-backed local database at data/db.json.

Frontend: React, TypeScript, Vite

Backend: Node.js, Express

AI: Groq Chat Completions API

Email: Nodemailer with SMTP

Storage: Local JSON database

UI Icons: Lucide React

You can also create a new account from the signup tab.

Install these before running the project:

Node.js 18 or newer

npm

A Groq API key

Optional: SMTP credentials if you want to send real emails

If you already have the project folder locally, open a terminal inside the project root.

On macOS or Linux, use:

On macOS or Linux, use:

Open .env and add your Groq API key:

The app will still run without a Groq key, but it will use local fallback responses instead of live AI analysis.

To send report PDFs by email, add SMTP settings to .env:

For Gmail, SMTP_PASS must be a Google App Password. A normal Gmail password will not work with SMTP.

If SMTP is not configured, the app stores report email attempts in the local demo outbox inside data/db.json.

On macOS or Linux, use:

This starts both services:

React frontend: http://127.0.0.1:5173

Express backend: http://127.0.0.1:8787

Open the app in your browser:

On macOS or Linux, use:

Login with a demo account or a newly created account.

Select a child record.

Open the Reports screen.

Add a parent, teacher, or mentor observation.

Analyze and save the observation.

Generate a confidential weekly report.

Download the report as a PDF.

Review or edit recipient emails.

Mail the confidential PDF report.

The PDF report includes:

Confidentiality notice.

Intended recipients.

Child profile summary.

Strengths.

Watch areas.

Next week plan.

Parent script.

Recent observations used.

Report mailing supports two modes:

SMTP mode: Sends the generated PDF report through configured SMTP credentials.

Demo outbox mode: If SMTP is not configured, the app saves the attempted delivery in data/db.json with a queued status.

This makes the feature easy to demonstrate locally while still supporting real email delivery when credentials are available.

The backend creates the local database automatically:

It stores users, children, contacts, calendar events, observations, generated reports, and report email delivery records.

This project uses local JSON storage to keep the setup simple for demos and interviews. In production, this layer should be replaced with a managed database and proper authentication.

Ability Compass avoids diagnostic or clinical claims. AI responses are framed as practical developmental guidance for parents, teachers, and mentors.

Reports are marked confidential and should only be shared with the intended care team. Real deployments should add stronger authentication, encrypted storage, audit logs, and stricter access control.

Ability Compass is not just an AI chat interface. It is a practical care-team system for storing child records, coordinating developmental activities, analyzing observations, and generating confidential reports. It demonstrates full-stack engineering, AI-assisted workflows, backend API design, local persistence, PDF generation, email delivery, and thoughtful handling of child-development data.