Installation Guide

Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you've got Python 3.10 or newer installed. Grab it from python.org if you don't — don't use anything older, some of the packages won't play nice. You'll also need Node.js 18+ for the frontend, and a free Groq API key from console.groq.com.

Step-by-Step Setup

First, clone the repo and move into the project folder. Then set up a virtual environment — python -m venv venv, and activate it.

Install backend dependencies with pip install -r requirements.txt. This pulls in Django, djangorestframework, django-cors-headers, pdfplumber, python-dotenv, and the groq package.

Create a .env file in the root and add your key: GROQ_API_KEY=your_key_here. Don't commit this file — it's already in .gitignore.

Run python manage.py migrate to set up the SQLite database, then python manage.py runserver to start the backend on port 8000.

Open a new terminal, go into the frontend folder, run npm install, then npm run dev. The frontend runs on port 3000 by default.

Common Issues

If Groq calls are timing out, check that your API key is active and you haven't hit the free tier rate limit — it resets pretty quickly, so just wait a minute and retry.

If PDF parsing returns mostly empty sections, it's usually because the uploaded PDF isn't a proper LinkedIn "Save to PDF" export. Ask the user to re-download it directly from their LinkedIn profile page.

How to Verify It's Working

Paste any sample LinkedIn-style text into the input page and hit submit. If you get a score back within a few seconds and can see section-wise breakdowns on the report page, you're good to go.