Pickup (formerly Quest)

A digital reading platform designed to enhance and personalize content consumption through AI-powered text-to-speech, social discovery, and intelligent recommendations.

🚀 Overview

Pickup is a comprehensive content consumption platform that transforms how users discover, read, and listen to digital content. Originally called Quest (getquest.co), the platform combines AI-powered audio synthesis, social content sharing, and a sophisticated real-time recommendation engine to create a seamless multimedia learning experience.

🧠 Technical Highlights

The platform features a real-time recommendation engine that processes millions of podcasts and articles through:

• Distributed Scraping Pipelines: Automated processing of 100+ podcast feeds and article sources, plus sophisticated data seeding from platforms like Curius.app
• Vector Similarity Search: Leveraging pgvector in PostgreSQL for high-performance content matching
• Hybrid Recommendation Algorithm: Combines content-based filtering, collaborative filtering, and social signals
• Real-Time Processing: Optimized for sub-second latency in content recommendations
• Unified Content System: Handles diverse content types (podcasts, articles) with consistent personalization

Core Features

• AI Text-to-Speech: Convert articles to high-quality audio via ElevenLabs
• Content Processing Pipeline: URL ingestion → AI summaries → audio generation → vector embeddings
• Social Discovery: Follow friends, share content, discover trending articles in your network
• Content Generation Engine: Reading pattern analysis, category-based recommendations, friend activity influence
• Multi-Modal Experience: Seamless reading/listening with progress tracking and highlights

🏗️ Architecture

This is a full-stack application with three main components:

📱 Mobile App (/app)

• Framework: React Native with Expo
• Language: TypeScript
• State Management: Redux Toolkit
• Navigation: React Navigation v6
• Audio: React Native Track Player
• Authentication: Firebase Auth + Apple/Google Sign-in

🖥️ Backend Server (/server)

• Framework: Express.js with Apollo GraphQL
• Language: TypeScript
• Database: PostgreSQL with pgvector for embeddings
• Authentication: Firebase Admin SDK
• Background Jobs: Inngest
• AI/ML: OpenAI API for content processing
• Audio Processing: FFmpeg for audio generation

🌐 Browser Extension (/chrome-extension-mv3-firebase)

• Type: Chrome Extension (Manifest V3)
• Framework: Webpack + Firebase
• Purpose: Content capture and quick access

🛠️ Development Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ (server requirement)
• Docker & Docker Compose
• Yarn (for app dependencies)
• npm (for server dependencies)

Quick Start

1. Clone the repository

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd pickup

2. Start PostgreSQL with Docker

   docker pull pgvector/pgvector:pg16
   docker compose -f deployments/pickup/docker-compose.yml up

3. Set up environment variables

   • Copy .env files to server/ and app/ directories
   • Configure Firebase, database, and API credentials

4. Install dependencies

   # Server
   cd server
   npm run install:all
   
   # App
   cd ../app
   yarn install
   npx pod-install  # iOS only

5. Run database migrations

   cd server
   npm run migrate:run

6. Start development servers

   # Terminal 1: Main server
   cd server
   npm run start:dev
   
   # Terminal 2: Background jobs
   npm run inngest:dev
   
   # Terminal 3: Inngest UI
   npx inngest-cli@latest dev -u http://localhost:8001/inngest
   
   # Terminal 4: Mobile app
   cd ../app
   npm run start

📋 Available Scripts

Server (/server)

• npm run start:dev - Development server with hot reload
• npm run build - Build production bundle
• npm run start - Run production server
• npm run inngest:dev - Background job worker (development)
• npm run migrate:run - Run database migrations
• npm run migrate:generate - Generate new migration
• npm run graphql:generate - Generate GraphQL schema and types
• npm run test - Run tests

Mobile App (/app)

• npm start - Start Expo development server
• npm run android - Run Android development build
• npm run ios - Run iOS development build
• npm run graphql:codegen - Generate GraphQL client code

Browser Extension (/chrome-extension-mv3-firebase)

• npm run build - Development build with watch mode
• npm run release - Production build

🔧 Technology Stack

Backend

• Runtime: Node.js
• Framework: Express.js
• GraphQL: Apollo Server
• Database: PostgreSQL + pgvector
• ORM: TypeORM
• Jobs: Inngest
• AI: OpenAI API
• Audio: ElevenLabs, FFmpeg
• Authentication: Firebase Admin
• Deployment: PM2

Frontend

• Mobile: React Native + Expo
• State: Redux Toolkit
• Navigation: React Navigation
• UI: React Native Elements, Gorhom Bottom Sheet
• Audio: React Native Track Player
• Auth: Firebase Auth, Apple/Google Sign-in

Infrastructure

• Database: PostgreSQL with pgvector extension
• Vector Storage: pgvector for content embeddings
• File Storage: Google Cloud Storage / Firebase Storage
• Background Jobs: Inngest + Redis
• Monitoring: Sentry

📱 Platform Support

• iOS: Full native support
• Chrome Extension: Content capture and quick access
• Web: Limited (some React Native packages not web-compatible)

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Originally developed as Quest (getquest.co) - a platform to "10x your reading" through personalized, AI-enhanced content consumption.