build-planner

An AI-powered business plan generator. Answer a short questionnaire and get a complete, editable business plan (executive summary, market analysis, competitive landscape, SWOT, and more), exportable to PDF.

Inspired by BizPlanner AI, built from scratch as an MVP first, with room to grow (persistence, payments, RAG for local market context, and more, added incrementally).

Repo structure

This is an npm-workspaces monorepo with two independently deployable apps and one shared package:

build-planner/
├── apps/
│   ├── backend/     # Express + TypeScript API (routes, services, models)
│   └── web/         # Next.js + TypeScript + Tailwind frontend
└── packages/
    └── shared/      # Zod schemas & types shared by both apps

• apps/backend exposes the API: generating plans via OpenAI, exporting PDFs, regenerating individual sections. Follows a routes → services → models layering (routes stay thin, business logic lives in services).
• apps/web is the user-facing app: the questionnaire, the plan preview/ editor, and the download flow.
• packages/shared holds the Zod schemas (Plan, QuestionnaireAnswers, etc.) that both apps import, so the API contract between frontend and backend can't silently drift.

For the reasoning behind these choices (why a monorepo, why Express instead of Next.js API routes, why no database yet), see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md (coming soon).

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+
• npm 10+
• An OpenAI API key (platform.openai.com)

Setup

1. Clone the repo

   git clone git@github.com:elcareem/build-planner.git
   cd build-planner

2. Install dependencies (installs all workspaces from the root)

   npm install

3. Configure environment variables

   cp apps/backend/.env.example apps/backend/.env

   Then open apps/backend/.env and fill in your OPENAI_API_KEY.

4. Run the apps

   In one terminal:

   npm run dev:backend

   Runs on http://localhost:4000. Confirm it's up:

   curl http://localhost:4000/health

   In another terminal:

   npm run dev:web

   Runs on http://localhost:3000.

Useful commands (run from repo root)

Command	What it does
npm run dev:backend	Start the backend in watch mode
npm run dev:web	Start the frontend dev server
npm run build --workspaces --if-present	Build all workspaces
npm run lint --workspaces --if-present	Lint all workspaces
npm ls --workspaces --depth=0	Sanity-check workspace linking

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for branch naming, commit conventions, and the checklist to run before opening a PR.

Status

Pre-MVP. No database, no auth, no payments yet — deliberately deferred until the core generate → preview → edit → export flow is proven out. See open issues for current scope and sequencing.