Brink - Your Last-Minute Life Saver

An AI productivity copilot that prioritizes your tasks, builds a realistic plan for the rest of your day, watches for things slipping before you have to ask, and lets you talk to it like a sharp, supportive friend - powered by Gemini via Google AI Studio.

What it does

• AI Prioritization: ranks your open tasks by urgency/importance with a one-line reason for each
• AI Daily Plan: builds a realistic, time-blocked schedule for the rest of today - aware of what's already on your Google Calendar
• Proactive reminders (Brink Notices): watches for deadlines closing in, streaks about to break, and calendar clashes, and surfaces the single most urgent one as an in-app banner with an AI-written nudge and a one-click fix
• Google Calendar sync: two-way - pulls your real events into the planner so it doesn't double-book you, and pushes new Brink tasks out to your Calendar as events with built-in reminders
• Conversational assistant: add, complete, or replan tasks just by talking (typed or voice)
• Brink Line: a live 12-hour timeline showing what's planned and what's looming

Stack

• Frontend: React + Vite + Tailwind CSS
• Backend: Node/Express (keeps your Gemini API key server-side, never exposed to the browser)
• AI: Gemini API via the @google/genai SDK (get your key from Google AI Studio)
• Calendar: Google Calendar API v3 + Google OAuth (via @react-oauth/google), browser-only flow, no client secret needed
• Deployment target: Google Cloud Run

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1. Run it locally

npm install
cp .env.example .env
# open .env and paste your Gemini API key into GEMINI_API_KEY
npm run dev

This runs the Vite dev server (frontend) and the Express server (backend) together. Open the URL Vite prints (usually http://localhost:5173).

Getting a Gemini API key

1. Go to https://aistudio.google.com
2. Click Get API key → Create API key
3. Copy it into your .env file as GEMINI_API_KEY=...

Getting a Google Calendar Client ID (optional - only needed for the Calendar feature)

Calendar sign-in uses Google's browser-only OAuth flow, so you only need a Client ID, not a client secret.

1. Go to the Google Cloud Console → Credentials
2. Create an OAuth 2.0 Client ID of type Web application
3. Under Authorized JavaScript origins, add http://localhost:5173 for local dev, and your Cloud Run URL once deployed (e.g. https://brink-app-xxxxxxxxxx.us-central1.run.app)
4. Copy the Client ID into .env as VITE_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=...
5. Make sure the Google Calendar API is enabled on the same project (Console → APIs & Services → Library)

If this is skipped, the app still works fully - prioritization, planning, chat, and reminders all function - the "Connect Calendar" button just won't be able to sign in until a Client ID is set.

Never commit .env - it's already in .gitignore.

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2. Deploy to Google Cloud Run

You need: a Google Cloud project with billing enabled (the free tier/credits cover this easily), and the gcloud CLI (https://cloud.google.com/sdk/docs/install) installed.

# 1. Authenticate and set your project
gcloud auth login
gcloud config set project YOUR_PROJECT_ID

# 2. Enable the services Cloud Run needs (one-time)
gcloud services enable run.googleapis.com artifactregistry.googleapis.com cloudbuild.googleapis.com

# 3. From inside the brink-app folder, deploy directly from source
#    (Cloud Build will read the Dockerfile and build the container for you)
gcloud run deploy brink-app \
  --source . \
  --region us-central1 \
  --allow-unauthenticated \
  --set-env-vars GEMINI_API_KEY=YOUR_GEMINI_API_KEY,VITE_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=YOUR_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID

That's it - gcloud will build the Docker image with Cloud Build, push it to Artifact Registry, and deploy it to Cloud Run. At the end it prints a Service URL like:

https://brink-app-xxxxxxxxxx.us-central1.run.app

That URL is your Deployed Application Link for submission.

Note: after your first deploy, go back to your OAuth Client ID's Authorized JavaScript origins and add this Service URL - otherwise Calendar sign-in will fail on the live site even though it works locally.

Updating after a code change

Just re-run the same gcloud run deploy command, it rebuilds and redeploys in place, same URL.

Keeping your API key out of the command line (optional, more secure)

Instead of --set-env-vars, store the key in Secret Manager:

echo -n "YOUR_GEMINI_API_KEY" | gcloud secrets create gemini-api-key --data-file=-
gcloud run deploy brink-app --source . --region us-central1 --allow-unauthenticated \
  --set-secrets GEMINI_API_KEY=gemini-api-key:latest \
  --set-env-vars VITE_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=YOUR_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID

---

3. Push to GitHub

git init
git add .
git commit -m "Brink: AI-powered last-minute life saver"
gh repo create brink-app --public --source=. --remote=origin --push
# (or create the repo on github.com and `git remote add origin <url>` then `git push -u origin main`)

Use this repo URL as your GitHub Repository Link.

---

Project structure

brink-app/
├── server/index.js              # Express backend - all Gemini calls happen here
├── src/
│   ├── App.jsx                   # Main layout, wires tasks + calendar + plan state together
│   ├── main.jsx                  # Mounts the app, sets up Google OAuth provider
│   ├── components/                # BrinkLine, BrinkNotices, TaskList, ScheduleTable, AddTaskModal, TopBar, FloatingChat
│   ├── state/
│   │   ├── useTasks.js            # Task state, persisted to localStorage
│   │   └── useGoogleCalendarAuth.js  # Google sign-in/out, access token lifecycle
│   └── lib/                       # api.js (fetch wrapper), time.js, calendar.js (Google Calendar API calls), recommendations.js (risk detection for Brink Notices)
├── Dockerfile                    # Multi-stage build for Cloud Run
└── .env.example

Notes for the submission doc

• Google technologies used: Gemini API, Google AI Studio (key generation + model development), Google Calendar API & Google OAuth (two-way calendar sync), Google Cloud Run (deployment), Cloud Build & Artifact Registry (build pipeline)
• Model used: gemini-2.5-flash by default, configurable via GEMINI_MODEL env var