Time estimate: ~15 minutes. You will have a fully working DualMind Lab instance with chat, arena comparisons, and voting.
Prerequisites
Download from nodejs.orgnode --version && npm --version
Create a free project at supabase.com. You need:
- Project URL (e.g.,
https://xxx.supabase.co)
- Anon key (Settings > API)
- Service role key (Settings > API)
- JWT secret (Settings > API > JWT Secret)
Save the JWT Secret immediately — you cannot retrieve it later without resetting it.
Get a free key at console.groq.com. This is the primary AI provider.Groq’s free tier gives you 30 requests/min and up to 800 tokens/sec — plenty for development.
Setup
Clone repositories
git clone https://github.com/HarshBhanushali07/DualMind_Back.git
git clone https://github.com/HarshBhanushali07/DualMind_UI.git
git clone https://github.com/HarshBhanushali07/DualMind_Admin-UI.git
Configure environment variables
Backend (.env)
Frontend (config.js)
Create .env in DualMind_Back/src/DualMind.API/:SUPABASE_URL=https://your-project.supabase.co
SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=eyJ...your-service-role-key
SUPABASE_KEY=eyJ...your-anon-key
JWT_SECRET=your-jwt-secret-from-supabase
GROQ_API_KEY=gsk_...your-groq-api-key
Never commit .env files to Git. The .gitignore already excludes them.
Edit DualMind_UI/config.js:window.DUALMIND_CONFIG.supabase.url = 'https://your-project.supabase.co';
window.DUALMIND_CONFIG.supabase.anonKey = 'eyJ...your-anon-key';
Start the backend
cd DualMind_Back/src/DualMind.API
dotnet restore
dotnet run
Verify: curl http://localhost:5079/health returns {"status":"healthy"}
Start the frontend
cd DualMind_UI
npm install
npm run dev
Verify: Open http://localhost:8000 in your browser
Your first arena battle
- Open
http://localhost:8000
- Click Login with Google (or create an account via Supabase)
- Type a prompt like “Explain quantum computing simply”
- Click Compare — two models respond side-by-side
- Vote for the better response
- Model names are revealed after voting
Get a JWT token by logging in through the frontend, then:curl -X POST http://localhost:5079/api/arena/chat \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_JWT_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"prompt": "Explain quantum computing in simple terms"}'
{
"object": "ai.response",
"success": true,
"message": "Quantum computing is a type of computing that...",
"model": {
"name": "llama-3.3-70b-versatile",
"displayName": "Llama 3.3 70B",
"provider": "groq"
},
"responseTimeMs": 1245,
"usage": { "promptTokens": 15, "completionTokens": 120, "totalTokens": 135 }
}
curl -X POST http://localhost:5079/api/arena/dualchat \
-H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_JWT_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"prompt": "Explain quantum computing", "selectionMode": "random"}'
agent1, agent2, comparisonId, and arena comparison metrics.Copy the comparisonId from the dual-chat response to submit a vote via POST /api/arena/model-vote.
You now have a running DualMind Lab instance with chat, comparisons, and voting.
Next steps
Architecture Overview
Understand the full system design
API Reference
Explore all API endpoints
Database Schema
See all tables and relationships
Troubleshooting
Fix common setup issues
Common issues
Root cause: JWT token is missing, expired, or signed with wrong secret.Fix:
- Verify JWT token is from Supabase Auth (not expired)
- Check
Authorization: Bearer <token> header format
- Ensure
JWT_SECRET in .env matches your Supabase project
# Paste your token at jwt.io to inspect claims
# Verify: iss matches SUPABASE_URL/auth/v1, aud is "authenticated"
Root cause: AI provider failure or missing database records.Fix:
- Check
GROQ_API_KEY is valid at console.groq.com
- Ensure
ai_models table has at least one row with status = 'active'
- Check backend terminal logs for the specific provider error
The fallback chain tries: Groq primary → Groq alt model → Bytez. All three must fail for a 500.
Frontend can't reach backend
Root cause: Backend not running or CORS misconfiguration.Fix:
- Verify backend is running:
curl http://localhost:5079/health
- Check
config.js — apiBaseUrl auto-detects localhost in development
- Open browser DevTools > Console for specific CORS or network errors
In production, the Cloudflare Worker proxies /api/* to the backend, so CORS is not an issue.
