Buddy Support

A mental-health support chatbot web app. Users sign up, log in, and chat with an OpenAI-backed assistant tuned to offer supportive, non-judgmental conversation and point toward mental health resources.

Disclaimer: Buddy Support is a student project, not a medical or crisis service. It does not provide professional advice. If you are in crisis, contact your local emergency number or a crisis line such as 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, US).

Demo

Watch the demo on YouTube

Features

• Chatbot interaction — chat with an assistant prompted to focus on mental health support (gpt-3.5-turbo).
• User accounts — sign up and log in, with passwords hashed using bcrypt.
• Resource pages — static pages linking to mental health information and contact details.

Technology stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	HTML, CSS, vanilla JS, EJS views
Backend	Node.js, Express
Database	MongoDB (via Mongoose)
AI	OpenAI API
Libraries	bcrypt, cors, dotenv, ejs

Architecture

The app currently runs as two separate Express processes plus a static frontend:

Process	Port	Responsibility
src/index.js	5000	Signup/login, EJS views, MongoDB user storage
server.js	3000 (or $PORT)	POST /api/chat proxy to the OpenAI API
Static HTML	5501	index.html, chatbot.html, about.html, etc.

server.js is configured to accept CORS requests from http://localhost:5501, which is the default port used by the VS Code Live Server extension.

Getting started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• A MongoDB database (local or Atlas)
• An OpenAI API key

Setup

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/gebrilfradj/BuddySupport.git
   cd BuddySupport

2. Install dependencies

   npm install

3. Add your OpenAI key

   Create a .env file in the project root (it is already git-ignored):

   OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-key-here
   PORT=3000
   

4. Set your MongoDB connection

   Update MONGODB_URI in src/config.js with your own connection string.

5. Start both servers

   npm start        # chat API on http://localhost:3000
   npm run start:auth   # auth server on http://localhost:5000

6. Serve the frontend

   Open the project in VS Code and start Live Server on port 5501, then browse to http://localhost:5501/index.html.

Usage

• Sign up or log in from the landing page.
• Open the chatbot page and type a message to talk with Buddy Support.
• Use the linked resources for further information and support.

Known limitations

• The auth server and chat server are not yet unified; a single entry point would simplify setup further.
• Sessions are not persisted after login, so the chatbot page is not gated behind authentication.
• Conversation history is not stored, each message is sent to OpenAI independently.
• Messages are sent to the OpenAI API and are subject to OpenAI's data policies.

License

No license has been specified yet. Consider adding one if you want others to be able to reuse this code.