Nayab

A free AI chat app — a public demo of offLLama (self-hosted llama.cpp inference), with paid-tier fallback to OpenAI/Anthropic and Gumroad license verification for upgrades.

Live at: zulqurnainj.com/chat

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Architecture

• Next.js 15, deployed as a standalone build, run via PM2 (nayab, port 3002)
• Served from zulqurnainj.com/chat, not a dedicated subdomain — the app's next.config.ts sets basePath: "/chat", which is why every route (including robots.txt/sitemap.xml) lives under that path prefix rather than at the app's own root.
• Reverse-proxied by nginx as part of the main zulqurnainj.com server block, not its own nginx site.
• SQLite database at DB_PATH (/var/data/nayab.db in production).
• Auth: NextAuth (NEXTAUTH_SECRET/NEXTAUTH_URL).

AI inference

Two tiers:

• Free: offLLama, a self-hosted llama.cpp server (OFFLLAMA_URL, defaults to http://127.0.0.1:8080 — needs to be running separately for the free tier to work).
• Paid: OpenAI or Anthropic, gated behind a Gumroad license check (GUMROAD_PRODUCT_ID).

Environment variables

See .env.example for the full list (copy to .env.local, never commit the real file). Notably:

• NEXT_PUBLIC_APP_URL / NEXTAUTH_URL should be https://zulqurnainj.com/chat — not a chat.zulqurnainj.com subdomain. A chat.zulqurnainj.com subdomain did exist briefly (created via an incomplete migration attempt) but was retired 2026-08-02 since its own root 404'd (the hardcoded /chat basePath meant the subdomain's bare root, and its own robots.txt/llms.txt/sitemap.xml, never worked) and the app was already correctly running at zulqurnainj.com/chat the whole time regardless.
• ALLOWED_ORIGINS (CORS allowlist) is not currently set in the live .env.local — the app falls back to a hardcoded default in src/lib/auth-middleware.ts. Consider actually setting this explicitly in production rather than relying on the code fallback.
• NEXTAUTH_SECRET must be a real generated value in production (openssl rand -base64 32) — the example file's placeholder is not safe to use as-is.

Deployment

.github/workflows/deploy.yml — push to main triggers an SSH deploy: git pull, npm ci, npm run build (memory-capped via NODE_OPTIONS), copies public/ and .next/static/ into the standalone build output, then pm2 reload nayab. It also briefly stops/restarts offllama-server around the build.

Public static files (public/)

robots.txt, llms.txt, sitemap.xml, index.md are all served under the app's /chat basePath. A byte-identical duplicate of these lives at /var/www/nayab-static/ on the VPS, aliased in from the main zulqurnainj.com site's own /chat/{robots.txt,llms.txt,sitemap.xml,index.md} routes — if you change one copy, change the other, or write a small script/step to keep them in sync automatically.