Creator AI Assistant — Bodhisattva Challenge

A chat-assistant website that helps Buddhist content creators script short videos for The Bodhisattva Challenge — a 365-day journey through Śāntideva's Bodhicharyavatara.

The creator picks a day, the app pulls that day's verses, plan, and classical commentary from a local clone of the source repo, suggests the video ideas that day's material can support, asks for a duration, and generates a spoken script. Optionally it turns the script into narrated audio.

Stack

• Frontend: React (Vite) — guided chat UI.
• Backend: Django + Django REST Framework.
• LLM + TTS: Google Gemini (one API key for both script and audio).
• Source content: a local clone of the bodhisattvacharyavatara-rails repo.

Architecture

frontend (React/Vite)  ──HTTP──>  backend (Django REST)  ──reads──>  rails repo (markdown)
                                          │
                                          └──> Gemini API (script + audio)

The backend reads day-plan + per-verse commentary files, runs one Gemini call to decide which ideas are available, and fills a per-idea prompt template to generate the script. No database is used for app data; generated scripts/audio are ephemeral and flow state lives in the browser.

Video ideas

Idea	When offered
Concept	always
Challenge / Practice	always
Testimony (creator supplies notes)	always
Story	when the day's material contains one
Extra info / fun fact	when the day's material contains one

Local setup

1. Backend

cd backend
python3 -m venv venv
venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env        # then edit .env

Set in backend/.env:

• RAILS_REPO_PATH — absolute path to your local clone of bodhisattvacharyavatara-rails.
• GEMINI_API_KEY — your Google Gemini API key (script + audio generation).

Run it:

venv/bin/python manage.py migrate          # built-in tables only
venv/bin/python manage.py check_content    # verify it can read the rails repo
venv/bin/python manage.py runserver        # http://localhost:8000

2. Frontend

cd frontend
npm install
cp .env.example .env        # VITE_API_BASE_URL defaults to http://localhost:8000
npm run dev                 # http://localhost:5173

Open http://localhost:5173 and start with a day number (e.g. 5).

Without a GEMINI_API_KEY, day loading and idea suggestions still work (idea availability falls back to a keyword heuristic), but script/audio generation returns a clear "not configured" message.

API

Method	Path	Purpose
GET	/api/health/	status + whether Gemini is configured
GET	/api/days/<n>/	verses, date, plan file, available ideas
POST	/api/script/	{day, ideaKey, durationSeconds, creatorNotes?} → {script}
POST	/api/audio/	{script, voice?} → {audioUrl}

Editing the "skills"

Each video idea is driven by an editable prompt template in backend/assistant/prompts/ (concept.md, story.md, extra_info.md, testimony.md, practice.md, plus shared _shared.md and assistant.md). Tune tone/structure there without touching code.

Deployment

See DEPLOY.md for EC2 (gunicorn + nginx).