Yapless

Yapless is a multi-mode AI chat system with integrated Web Search (Web, Reddit, Wikipedia) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities.
It follows a microservice + macroservice architecture for scalability and modularity.

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Services Overview

Service	Tech Stack	Role
Client	React.js + TypeScript	Frontend UI
Main Service	Node.js + TypeScript	API Gateway & Orchestration
Web Search Service	Node.js + TypeScript	Search + Scraping
LLM Service	Python + FastAPI + Chroma	Vectorization + Gemini LLM

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Features

• Multiple chat modes: detailed, sarcastic, auto
• Web, Reddit, and Wikipedia search
• Multi-tier scraping (Readability → Cheerio → Puppeteer)
• Vector storage & retrieval with Chroma DB
• Fully containerized (Docker Compose)
• Can also run without Docker for development or debugging

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Prerequisites

Choose one setup method:

Docker Method (Recommended)

• Docker >= 20.x
• Docker Compose >= 2.x

Manual Method (No Docker)

• Node.js >= 18
• Python >= 3.10
• npm / yarn
• pip

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Environment Setup

Each service requires its own .env file.

For each service, there is a .env.sample file that can be used as a template for setting up your environment variables. Copy the .env.sample to .env (or .env.local for the client) and update it with your own values.

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Running with Docker (Recommended)

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/yapless.git
cd yapless

2. Set up environment variables for all services using the provided .env.sample files.

3. Run the stack

docker compose up --build

4. Access the app Frontend: http://localhost:3000 Main API: http://localhost:8080

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Running Without Docker

Run each service in its own terminal:

1. Start Chroma DB

pip install chromadb
chromadb run --path ./data/chroma

2. Web Search Service

cd services/web-search
cp .env.sample .env
npm install
npm run dev

3. LLM Service

cd services/llm-service
cp .env.sample .env
pip install -r requirements.txt
uvicorn app:app --reload --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

4. Main Service

cd services/main-service
cp .env.sample .env
npm install
npm run dev

5. Client

cd client
cp .env.sample .env.local
npm install
npm run dev

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API Endpoints

Main Service

• POST /chat → Chat with AI (with/without search)
• GET /health → Health check

Web Search Service

• POST /search → Web/Reddit/Wikipedia search
• POST /scrape → Scrape and clean a URL

LLM Service

• POST /vectorize → Store document vectors
• POST /query → Query LLM with retrieval