AI News App

AI News App is a Next.js project that fetches news articles, stores them in PostgreSQL with Prisma, shows them in a feed, supports Google login, Redis caching, and AI article summaries.

Setup

1. Install dependencies:

npm install

2. Create a .env file in the project root and add these values:

DATABASE_URL=
NEXTAUTH_URL=
NEXTAUTH_SECRET=
GOOGLE_ID=
GOOGLE_SECRET=
GOOGLE_GEMINI_API=
NEWS_API=
UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL=
UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN=

3. Run the app locally:

npm run dev

4. Build for production:

npm run build

What the env values mean

• DATABASE_URL: PostgreSQL connection string.
• NEXTAUTH_URL: Base URL of your app, such as http://localhost:3000.
• NEXTAUTH_SECRET: A secret string used by NextAuth.
• GOOGLE_ID and GOOGLE_SECRET: OAuth client ID and secret from Google Cloud.
• GOOGLE_GEMINI_API: API key from Google AI Studio.
• NEWS_API: API key from World News API.
• UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL: The REST URL provided by Upstash Redis.
• UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN: The REST token provided by Upstash Redis.

How to generate a secret key

Use this command to create a strong secret for NEXTAUTH_SECRET:

openssl rand -base64 32

Copy the output into your .env file.

Notes

• The app uses World News API for fetching news.
• Google login needs an OAuth client created in Google Cloud Console.
• Gemini summaries need a key from Google AI Studio.
• AI generated summaries are securely cached in Redis to drastically reduce API costs and improve response times (from ~8.2s down to ~72ms).

Deployment & Cron Jobs

This app uses a scheduled background job to fetch news 6 times a day (every 4 hours).

• Vercel Deployments: Set CRON_SECRET in your project environment variables so scheduled calls can authenticate to /api/jobs.
• Azure / VPS / Docker: You must run the cron script alongside your web server. In your environment, start the background worker process using: npm run cron. Make sure both NEXTAUTH_URL (e.g., NEXTAUTH_URL=https://your-production-domain.com) and CRON_SECRET are set so the cron script can call the protected endpoint.

Health Check

A simple health check endpoint is available for CI/CD pipelines, Docker deployments, or uptime monitors.

To verify the app is running, run:

curl http://localhost:3000/api/health

Expected Response:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "timestamp": "2026-08-09T12:00:00.000Z"
}