MentorLoop

MentorLoop is the project I built to make developer career preparation feel less scattered.

As a student or early-career developer, it is easy to collect tutorials, build a few projects, practise random interview questions, and still not know what to do next. I wanted one place that could connect those pieces. MentorLoop helps a learner understand their current skills, get feedback on code and GitHub projects, follow a focused learning plan, and practise interviews with useful feedback.

This is not meant to replace learning by doing. The goal is to make the next step clearer.

What MentorLoop can do

• Create an account and build a developer profile
• Track technical skills and confidence levels
• Analyse code and receive structured feedback, best practices, practice tasks, and interview questions
• Review a public GitHub repository for portfolio value, strengths, gaps, and suggested improvements
• Generate a personalised weekly learning roadmap from the user's profile and activity
• Run AI-powered mock interviews and save the results
• Show career analytics based on skills, roadmaps, code analyses, project reviews, and interviews

A quick look at the stack

Part of the project	What I used
Frontend	React, Vite, React Router, Tailwind CSS, Axios, Context API
Backend	Node.js, Express, Mongoose
Database	MongoDB / MongoDB Atlas
Authentication	JWT and bcrypt
AI features	Google Gemini through @google/genai
Project data	GitHub REST API
UI polish	Framer Motion, Lucide React, Sonner

Project structure

MentorLoop/
├── backend/       # Express API, models, controllers, services, and middleware
├── frontend/      # React application and user interface
├── render.yaml    # Render deployment blueprint
└── README.md

Running it on my machine

You will need Node.js 18+ and a MongoDB database. MongoDB Atlas works well if you do not want to run MongoDB locally.

Install the dependencies once:

npm install --prefix backend
npm install --prefix frontend

Then, from the repository root, start both applications:

npm run both

The frontend runs at http://localhost:5173 and the API runs at http://localhost:5000.

Backend environment

Copy backend/.env.example to backend/.env and fill in your own values:

PORT=5000
NODE_ENV=development
CLIENT_URL=http://localhost:5173

MONGODB_URI=your_mongodb_connection_string

JWT_SECRET=use_a_long_random_secret
JWT_EXPIRES_IN=7d

GEMINI_API_KEY=your_google_gemini_key
GEMINI_MODEL=gemini-2.5-flash

GITHUB_TOKEN=optional_github_personal_access_token

Frontend environment

Copy frontend/.env.example to frontend/.env:

VITE_API_BASE_URL=http://localhost:5000/api

Only VITE_ values are available in the browser. I keep secrets such as the MongoDB URL, JWT secret, Gemini key, and GitHub token in the backend environment only.

Deploying on Render

The project is set up as two services: an Express API and a Vite static site. render.yaml is included if you prefer a Render Blueprint, but the same values can be entered in the Render dashboard.

Backend: Render Web Service

Render setting	Value
Root Directory	backend
Build Command	npm ci
Start Command	npm start
Health Check Path	/api/health

Set these values in the backend service environment settings:

NODE_ENV=production
MONGODB_URI=your_mongodb_atlas_connection_string
JWT_SECRET=a_long_random_production_secret
JWT_EXPIRES_IN=7d
GEMINI_API_KEY=your_google_gemini_key
GEMINI_MODEL=gemini-2.5-flash
GITHUB_TOKEN=optional_github_token
CLIENT_URL=https://your-frontend-name.onrender.com

Render assigns PORT automatically, so it should not be set manually. After deployment, open:

https://your-api-name.onrender.com/api/health

You should see a success response.

Frontend: Render Static Site

Render setting	Value
Root Directory	frontend
Build Command	npm ci && npm run build
Publish Directory	dist

Add this build-time environment variable:

VITE_API_BASE_URL=https://your-api-name.onrender.com/api

Because React Router handles routes in the browser, add this Render rewrite rule:

Source	Destination	Action
/*	/index.html	Rewrite

Once the frontend has a URL, copy that exact origin into the backend's CLIENT_URL setting and redeploy the backend. This allows the deployed frontend to call the API safely.

If Render shows a blank page or /assets/... 404

That normally means index.html was published without its matching Vite files. The important part is that, with frontend set as the root directory, the publish directory must be just dist not frontend/dist.

After correcting the setting, use Manual Deploy → Clear build cache & deploy. The deployment log should list files under dist/assets/, and the browser should request the same hashed asset names that appear in that log.

How Codex and GPT-5.6 helped me build it

I used Codex and GPT-5.6 as a hands-on development partner while building MentorLoop. They helped me move from an initial idea to a working full-stack project by breaking the work into smaller milestones and checking each part as it came together.

In practice, they helped me with:

• Planning the project structure so the React frontend and Express backend stayed organised as features grew
• Building and reviewing API routes, models, JWT protection, validation, and MongoDB integration
• Designing the AI service layer so Gemini-related code stayed separate from controllers and routes
• Connecting the frontend to real backend responses and tracking down issues during onboarding, skills, roadmaps, and deployment
• Improving the dashboard, loading states, responsive design, and accessibility without removing the existing product flow
• Writing deployment notes and helping me understand issues such as CORS, Atlas response time, environment variables, and static-site asset paths

The product decisions, feature direction, testing, configuration, and final choices are still mine. I treated AI as a fast collaborator for explaining options, generating starting points, and debugging not as something that could understand the project without my review.

Useful commands

# Start only the API
npm run dev --prefix backend

# Start only the frontend
npm run dev --prefix frontend

# Create a production frontend build
npm run build --prefix frontend

A small note on secrets

.env files are ignored by Git for a reason. Please do not commit your Atlas URI, Gemini key, JWT secret, or GitHub token. If a key is ever exposed, revoke it and create a new one.