Quickstart

Run the Next.js AI Chatbot locally in under five minutes.

This guide walks you through cloning the repository, configuring environment variables, running database migrations, and starting the development server.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following:

• Node.js v18 or later
• pnpm package manager
• A PostgreSQL database (e.g. local Postgres, Neon, or Supabase)
• An OpenAI API key — used for the default gpt-4o chat model
• A Fireworks AI API key — used for reasoning models

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/Wikedhart18/nextjs-ai-chatbot.git
   cd nextjs-ai-chatbot
   
2. Install dependencies

   pnpm install
   
3. Set up environment variables

   Copy .env.example to .env.local and fill in your values:

   cp .env.example .env.local
   

   .env.local

   # Get your OpenAI API Key here for chat models: https://platform.openai.com/account/api-keys
   OPENAI_API_KEY=your_openai_api_key
   
   # Get your Fireworks AI API Key here for reasoning models: https://fireworks.ai/account/api-keys
   FIREWORKS_API_KEY=your_fireworks_api_key
   
   # Generate a random secret: https://generate-secret.vercel.app/32 or `openssl rand -base64 32`
   AUTH_SECRET=your_auth_secret
   
   # Instructions to create a Vercel Blob Store here: https://vercel.com/docs/storage/vercel-blob
   BLOB_READ_WRITE_TOKEN=your_blob_read_write_token
   
   # Instructions to create a database here: https://vercel.com/docs/storage/vercel-postgres/quickstart
   POSTGRES_URL=your_postgres_connection_url
   

   Never commit your .env.local file to version control. It contains secrets that grant access to your OpenAI account, database, and authentication provider.

   BLOB_READ_WRITE_TOKEN and POSTGRES_URL are created automatically when you deploy to Vercel and add the Vercel Blob and Vercel Postgres storage integrations. For local development, create these resources manually and paste the connection values here.

4. Run database migrations

   Drizzle reads POSTGRES_URL from .env.local and applies the schema defined in lib/db/schema.ts:

   pnpm db:migrate
   

   Migrations are also run automatically as part of pnpm build (tsx lib/db/migrate && next build), so you only need to run this command explicitly during local development.

5. Start the development server

   pnpm dev
   

   The app uses Next.js with Turbopack (next dev --turbo) for fast local rebuilds.

6. Open the app and create an account

   Navigate to http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

   Register a new account, then start a conversation to verify everything is working.