🏛️ Agora

The Future of Socratic Learning — Voice‑First & Retrieval‑Augmented.

Features • Architecture • Getting Started • Tech Stack • Contributing

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📖 Introduction

Agora is the Apex of Agentic Education. It moves beyond standard "instructional" AI to provide a true Socratic tutoring experience. By combining State-of-the-Art (SOTA) LLMs with high-fidelity voice interfaces and a collaborative whiteboard, Agora creates a learning environment that monitors student frustration and provides targeted, retrieval-augmented guidance.

💎 Features

• 🎙️ Zero-Latency Voice Loop: leverages Groq's Whisper (STT) and Edge TTS for near-instant human-like verbal interaction.
• 🧠 Socratic Reasoning Engine: Powered by LangGraph, the backend manages pedagogy states, ensuring the tutor prompts the student to think rather than just giving answers.
• 📚 Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG): Integrates with Qdrant to provide contextually relevant responses based on your uploaded materials (PDFs, Images, Notes).
• 🎨 Collaborative Whiteboard: Real-time integration with Tldraw via Socket.IO allowing the AI to draw and highlight concepts synchronously with the student.
• ⚡ High-Performance Parsing: Uses Docling for deep document structure extraction from complex PDFs and images.

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🏗️ Architecture

graph TD
    User((User)) <--> |Voice/WS| FE[Next.js Frontend]
    FE <--> |Socket.IO| BE[FastAPI Backend]
    subgraph Services
        BE --> |STT/LLM| Groq[Groq Cloud]
        BE --> |RAG| Qdrant[(Qdrant Vector DB)]
        BE --> |TTS| Edge[Edge TTS]
        BE --> |Parsing| Docling[Docling Engine]
    end

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🚀 Getting Started

Follow these instructions to set up your local development environment.

📋 Prerequisites

• Git: Download Git
• Python 3.12+: Download Python
• Node.js 20+: Download Node.js
• pnpm: npm install -g pnpm
• Docker: Download Docker (Required for Qdrant)
• UV: For high-speed Python dependency management. Install via pip install uv.

1. Clone & Install

git clone https://github.com/harshagarwalnyu/HackNYU-Agora.git
cd HackNYU-Agora

2. Environment Configuration

1. Backend: Copy backend/.env.example to backend/.env.
2. API Keys: Enter your GROQ_API_KEY in backend/.env. Get one here.

3. Launching

Quick-Start (Windows Recommended)

./dev.ps1

Manual Start

1. Start Services: docker compose up -d qdrant
2. Backend: cd backend && uv run python -m app.main
3. Frontend: cd frontend && pnpm install && pnpm dev

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🛠️ Tech Stack

• Frontend: Next.js 15, Tailwind CSS, Zustand, Tldraw, Socket.IO Client.
• Backend: FastAPI, LangGraph, Pydantic, Docling, Python-SocketIO.
• Persistence: Qdrant (Vector Database).
• Inference: Groq (Llama 3.3 / Whisper), Edge TTS.

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🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please follow these steps:

1. Fork the project.
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature).
5. Open a Pull Request.

📜 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

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Built for NYU Hackathon 2025