Zenith Study Hub

Inspiration

Like many students, I often had to juggle balancing multiple courses, and I was tired of using separate tools for calendars, assignments, and time tracking. I built Zenith Study Hub to consolidate everything into one platform designed specifically for academic life.

What I Learned

Building a dual-mode system (demo + authenticated users) taught me flexible architecture design
Implementing JWT authentication and bcrypt password hashing deepened my security knowledge
Deploying to Vercel's serverless environment showed me the differences between local and production environments
Managing state across a full-stack app improved my understanding of data flow

How I Built It

Built with Next.js and TypeScript on the frontend for a responsive UI with Tailwind CSS. The backend uses Node.js/Express with a PostgreSQL database for persistent storage. Implemented JWT authentication, RESTful API design, and deployed everything to Vercel.

Key Features

Smart Calendar: Date filtering with events sorted chronologically
Focus Sessions: Pomodoro-style tracking where session duration
Project Tracking: Progress monitoring with \(p \in [0, 100]\) representing completion percentage
Course Management: Normalized database schema with foreign key relationships

Challenges

Session isolation: Ensured user data separation between each user
Dual storage systems: Supporting both in-memory (demo) and database (real users) required smart abstraction
Serverless constraints: Learned to work with Vercel's stateless functions and cold starts
Performance: Optimized with SSR, database indexes, and reduced unnecessary API calls by ~50%