---
title: How it works
description: 'Learn the architecture of the project'
---

Gitroom is a tool to convert private communication into public knowledge.<br />
The entire project is built under [NX](https://nx.dev/) to have a monorepo with multiple projects.<br /><br />
Unlike other NX project, this project has one `.env` file that is shared between all the apps.<br />
It makes it easier to develop and deploy the project.<br /><br />
When deploying to websites like [Railway](https://railway.app) or [Heroku](https://heroku.com), you can use a shared environment variables for all the apps.<br /><br />

**At the moment it has 6 project:**

- **Backend** - NestJS based system
- **Panel** - NextJS based control panel.
- **Tenants** - NextJS based multi-tenant website.
- **Discord** - NestJS based Discord bot.
- **Marketing** - NextJS based marketing website.
- **Docs** - Mintlify based documentation website.

<img
  src="/images/arch.png"
  alt="Architecture of Gitroom"
/>

## Architecture
### Backend
The project has a centralized backend that both the bots and the client interact with.<br />
The backend is built with [NestJS](https://nestjs.com/) with a basic architecture of controllers, services, repositories and dtos.<br /><br />
It uses [Prisma](https://www.prisma.io/) as an ORM to interact with the database.<br />
By default Prisma uses [Postgres](https://www.postgresql.org/) as a database, but it can be easily changed to any other database since there are no native queries.<br /><br />
The project doesn't have a control panel login, it works with an SSO using the different bots.<br />
Once somebody uses a command like `/add` or `/signin` the backend will receive the server id and the internal user id from the bot.<br /><br />
The backend will auto-create an organization and a user if it doesn't exist.<br />
It will return a URL with the JWT token embedded in the url to sign in into the control panel.

### Panel
The panel is built with [NextJS](https://nextjs.org/) and [TailwindCSS](https://tailwindcss.com/).<br />
The panel has 4 main pages:
- The main control panel to create and manage the FAQ.
- A style page to customize the FAQ.
- A "Create an faq" page, it takes an entire conversation and converts it into an FAQ with OpenAI ChatGPT.
- Domains page to manage the domains and subdomains that lead to the tenant website.
- An integrations page to add bots to different platforms such as: Discord, Slack, Intercom, etc.

### Tenants
The tenants is built with [NextJS](https://nextjs.org/) and [TailwindCSS](https://tailwindcss.com/).<br />
It's the website for the end-users to see the FAQ.<br />
It contains a simple search bar and a list of questions.<br />
The search bar uses [Algolia](https://www.algolia.com/) to search through the questions.<br />
It uses the style from the control panel to customize the website.<br />
The tenants cache each pages on the `Gitroom.com/[domainName]` path, it uses a middleware to rewrite the Vercel apex domain or the custom domain to the route.<br />

### Discord
The Discord bot is built with [Discord.JS](https://discord.js.org/) and [NestJS](https://nestjs.com/).<br />
It runs in a loop and listens to every message in every server it's in.<br />
Once somebody runs a command such as `/add` or `/signin` it will send a request to the backend with the server id and the user id.<br />
This is a simple server and in the future there will be many other bots for different platforms.

### Marketing
The marketing website is built with [NextJS](https://nextjs.org/) and [TailwindCSS](https://tailwindcss.com/).<br />
It's a simple static websites with a few pages.

### Docs
The documentation website is built with [Mintlify](https://www.mintlify.com/).<br />
The reference in the documentation is being auto-generated by the backend.<br />
NestJS has a built-in Swagger module that generates a JSON file with all the routes and their documentation.<br />
It makes it very easy to track API changes and deploy them.