ConvoVault

ConvoVault is a React chat simulator for conversations with AI-generated personas.

Pick a set of historical or fictional figures, optionally give them a topic, and the app simulates a group chat between them. The UI presents the result like a real messaging app, with sessions, avatars, chat bubbles, and typing/thinking states.

Features

• AI vs Human mode: chat one-on-one with a generated famous-person persona.
• AI vs AI mode: create a group of 2-5 characters and run an automated conversation between them.
• Character controls: add, rename, delete, or randomize characters before starting a simulation.
• Topic controls: optionally declare a discussion topic and choose short, normal, or long simulation length.
• Session history: keep up to 5 separate chat sessions in the left sidebar.
• Avatars: fetches public portraits from Wikipedia when available, with initials or emoji fallbacks.
• Personal settings: upload a user avatar and switch appearance themes.

Tech Stack

• React 19
• Vite 8
• Tailwind CSS 4
• Radix UI / shadcn-style UI primitives
• DeepSeek Chat Completions API
• Wikipedia APIs for portrait lookup

Getting Started

Install dependencies:

npm install

Create a local environment file:

cp ".env example" .env.local

Then fill in your DeepSeek API key:

VITE_DEEPSEEK_API_KEY=your_deepseek_api_key
VITE_DEEPSEEK_MODEL=deepseek-v4-flash

Start the development server:

npm run dev

Then open the local Vite URL printed in the terminal.

Available Scripts

npm run dev

Runs the app in development mode.

npm run build

Creates a production build.

npm run preview

Serves the production build locally.

npm run lint

Runs ESLint across the project.

How It Works

The app has two conversation modes:

• In AI vs Human, ConvoVault generates a single assistant profile, including name, introduction, personality, Wikipedia title, and avatar fallback. User messages are sent to DeepSeek with a persona-specific system prompt.
• In AI vs AI, the selected characters become simulation participants. The model returns one short JSON message at a time with a speaker and message, and the chat UI renders each turn as a separate bubble.

Key files:

• src/App.jsx: three-panel app layout for history, chat, and profile controls.
• src/components/Chatbox/Chatbox.jsx: chat rendering, message sending, typing state, and AI-vs-AI simulation loop.
• src/components/Profile/AIProfile.jsx: generated one-on-one persona profile.
• src/components/Profile/CharacterList.jsx: AI-vs-AI character and simulation controls.
• src/config/systemPrompt.js: prompts for persona generation, random character selection, and simulations.
• src/services/aiRouting.js: DeepSeek API integration.
• src/services/wikipediaPortrait.js: Wikipedia portrait lookup.

Notes

• VITE_DEEPSEEK_API_KEY is required for AI responses.
• Character portraits depend on public Wikipedia image availability.
• Session and message state are currently kept in React state. The uploaded user avatar is stored in localStorage.