万文社 / Glyphora

Vạn Văn Xã · Glyphora

A multilingual community platform built around people, languages, writing systems, conversation, and shared knowledge.

Glyphora is not designed as a simple forum clone. It combines community posts, discovery, social relationships, real-time chat, shared notes, multilingual UI, and support for underrepresented writing systems such as Vietnamese Chữ Nôm.

The project is developed as a monorepo with a Flutter mobile client, React administration dashboard, Node.js API, PostgreSQL, and Firebase services.

Screenshots

Screenshot placeholders are intentionally kept here. Add the images under docs/screenshots/ and replace each placeholder when ready.

Community Feed

📸 Screenshot placeholder: docs/screenshots/feed.png

Post / Content Detail

📸 Screenshot placeholder: docs/screenshots/post-detail.png

Real-time Chat

📸 Screenshot placeholder: docs/screenshots/chat.png

Multilingual UI

📸 Screenshot placeholder: docs/screenshots/multilingual-ui.png

Vietnamese Chữ Nôm

📸 Screenshot placeholder: docs/screenshots/chu-nom.png

Profile / Discover

📸 Screenshot placeholder: docs/screenshots/profile-discover.png

Admin Dashboard

📸 Screenshot placeholder: docs/screenshots/admin-dashboard.png

Feature Overview

Glyphora already contains several connected product systems rather than a single forum feed.

Authentication & Accounts

User registration and login
Firebase Authentication session handling
Authentication gate between signed-in and signed-out experiences
Forgot-password flow
Password reset email flow
Password change screen
Username availability checks backed by PostgreSQL
Firebase user → PostgreSQL user synchronization
Local history of previously used accounts
Authentication failure mapping and user-facing error handling
Protected API operations using authenticated Firebase identities

User Profiles

Personal profile screen
Public user profile screen
User directory / user listing
Username and nickname
Avatar upload and storage
Biography
Birthday
Optional age visibility through showAge
Created-at and last-active information
User-linked post history
Profile statistics and reusable profile header components

Language Identity

Language information is stored as structured profile data instead of being treated as plain text.

Users can maintain:

Languages they know
Language codes
Script codes
Language proficiency levels
Multiple language entries
Script-aware language display
Editable language profiles

This lets Glyphora represent language and writing-system identity directly in the user model.

Localized Names

A user can maintain multiple localized forms of their name.

Each localized name contains:

languageCode
scriptCode
name

This makes it possible for the same profile to present different names across different languages or writing systems.

Multilingual Profile Tags

Profile tags are structured multilingual objects rather than only strings.

Supported fields include:

value
languageCode
scriptCode
translations[]

Features include:

Add and remove profile tags
Edit profile tags
Up to 10 tags per user
Language-aware tags
Script-aware tags
Multiple translated versions of a tag
Localized tag rendering
Backward compatibility with legacy string-only tags
AI-assisted tag translation through the backend

Community & Posts

Feed & Discovery

Community feed
Post cards
Post detail navigation
Public content browsing
Language-channel browsing
Category-based browsing
Discover screen for finding users and content
User-directory integration with social actions
Loading and error states through feature-specific state management

Content Categories

The home experience supports configurable content categories, including areas such as:

Language learning
Programming
Other community categories defined by the application configuration

Language Channels

Glyphora separates interface language from community content language.

A user can keep the application UI in one language while browsing another language's community channel.

The Flutter client includes:

Dedicated language-channel selection
Large language lists
Alphabetic navigation
Current channel state
Script-aware language configuration

Create Posts

Create a new post
Title
Rich-text body
Content category
Primary content language
Up to 9 images
Local image selection
Firebase Storage media upload
PostgreSQL image metadata
Stable post IDs during backend migration
Idempotent retry protection to avoid accidental duplicate posts

Backend validation currently enforces limits such as:

title   <= 300 characters
content <= 5000 characters
images  <= 9

Rich-text Content

Posts store both rendered text content and structured editor data.

content
bodyDelta

Rich-text editing and rendering use Flutter Quill.

Post Media

Multiple images per post
Image preview UI
Ordered image metadata
Image upload abstraction
Post-edit media cleanup planning
Replacement of image sets during editing
Firebase Storage for media files
PostgreSQL for media URLs and ordering

Post Detail

The post-detail experience brings together most community actions:

View author information
View rich-text content
View post images
View category and timestamps
Like / unlike
Comment
Reply
Bookmark / remove bookmark
Report content
View available language versions
Switch between language versions
Request AI translation
Add a manual translation
Edit owned posts
Delete owned posts
View post edit history

Likes

Post likes are backed by server-side business logic.

Supported operations:

PUT    /api/v1/posts/:id/like
DELETE /api/v1/posts/:id/like

The operations are designed to be idempotent so repeated network requests do not create duplicate likes or invalid unlike states.

Comments & Replies

Comments

Load comments for a post
Create text comments
Create image comments
Combine text and image content
Author avatar and display name
Localized author names
Comment timestamps
Server-maintained comment counts

Replies

Glyphora currently supports a structured top-level comment + reply model.

Post
 └── Comment
      ├── Reply
      ├── Reply
      └── Reply

Replies store their parent comment and the display name of the user being replied to.

Bookmarks

Bookmark a post
Remove a bookmark
Persist bookmarks in the backend
Dedicated bookmarked-posts screen
Load the current user's saved posts
Track bookmark timestamps
Show newest bookmarks first
Idempotent bookmark and unbookmark operations

Backend endpoints include:

POST   /api/v1/posts/:id/bookmark
DELETE /api/v1/posts/:id/bookmark
GET    /api/v1/users/me/bookmarks

Multilingual Post Versions

A Glyphora post is not restricted to a single language representation.

Post
 ├── Original language version
 ├── Manual translation
 ├── AI translation
 ├── AI-assisted translation
 └── Additional language versions

Each post keeps information such as:

primaryLanguageCode
availableLanguageCodes
PostVersion[]

New versions can be added to an existing post without creating a separate unrelated post.

Translation Provenance

Post versions distinguish how a translation was created:

original
manual
ai
ai_assisted

This keeps human-written, machine-generated, and assisted translations distinguishable in the data model.

Manual Translation

Users can create their own translated version of an existing post and publish it as a new language version.

AI Translation

The Node.js backend contains dedicated post-translation routes and services.

The workflow supports:

Choose a target language
Translate the title
Translate the post body
Return a translated post version
Persist translation provenance
Surface AI translation failures to the client

Profile tags also have a separate AI translation service.

Social Graph

Glyphora supports both following and friendship as separate concepts.

Following

Follow users
Unfollow users
Determine current follow state
Followers
Following
Follow counts
Follow statistics on profiles

Friends

Send friend requests
View incoming friend requests
Accept friend requests
Maintain friendship relationship state
Friends list
Friend-specific state management

Blocking

Block users
View blocked users
Unblock users
Use relationship state to restrict social interactions

Real-time Chat

The Flutter client contains a full chat feature rather than a placeholder.

Conversations

Conversation list
Chat threads
Open a direct conversation
Real-time message streams
Chat-specific Cubit / repository layers

Messages

Send messages
Receive messages
Message bubbles
Sender-aware presentation
Message input bar
Real-time updates
Message previews

Chat Media

Dedicated chat-media repository
Firebase-backed media uploads
Image / media messages

Emoji

Built-in emoji picker
Insert emoji into chat input

Live Drafts

Chat contains a dedicated live-draft data layer:

LiveDraft
LiveDraftRepository
FirebaseLiveDraftRepository

This provides infrastructure for synchronizing in-progress draft state separately from sent messages.

Message Lifecycle & Cleanup

The chat lifecycle is designed so that deleting a message does not always immediately destroy its underlying data.

Active Message
      ↓
User hides / deletes
      ↓
Logical deletion
      ↓
cleanupAt
      ↓
Scheduled Node.js cleanup job
      ↓
Physical deletion

The cleanup job can also remove associated media and maintain the latest valid conversation preview.

Shared Notes

Chat participants can create longer-form shared notes for information that should outlive an individual message.

Available functionality includes:

Notes overview
User-specific shared-note screen
Open a note editor
Create and update notes
Firebase persistence
Rich-text note content
Note image support
Dedicated note-media repository

Use cases include:

Conversation summaries
Learning material
Shared ideas
Draft content
Collaborative notes

Rich-text editing is powered by Flutter Quill.

Post Editing & History

Edit existing posts
Replace post media
Remove unused media
Track update timestamps
Store post edit-history entries
Dedicated post edit-history screen
Delete posts
Cascade related database records such as versions and image metadata where appropriate

This gives Glyphora a lightweight revision-history capability in addition to normal social-post editing.

Reporting & Moderation

User Reporting

Report posts
Submit report reasons
Persist reports in the backend
View the current user's submitted reports
Track report state

Moderation

The API contains dedicated moderation routes under:

/api/v1/admin/moderation

Moderation decisions influence normal content visibility. Posts whose reports have been actioned are filtered from regular post, comment, and bookmark queries.

Administration

Glyphora includes a separate React administration application.

Current administration functionality includes:

Administrator login
Protected administration routes
Dashboard
Platform overview / statistics entry point
Reports management
Moderation workflows
Backend admin APIs

The administration project is intentionally separated from the Flutter mobile client.

User Interests

The Node.js API includes a dedicated interests subsystem:

/api/v1/users/me/interests

This provides backend infrastructure for storing user interests and can support future personalization, discovery, and feed-ranking work.

Settings & Security

The Flutter client includes dedicated settings and security screens.

Current areas include:

General settings
Security settings
Password change
Account-related operations
Birthday editing
Age visibility preferences
Language and profile customization

Multilingual by Design

Multilingual support is part of the application architecture rather than a late UI translation layer.

The localization system supports multiple interface languages, including:

中文
English
日本語
한국어
Bahasa Melayu
Tiếng Việt
ไทย

Glyphora also supports a dedicated Vietnamese Han-script locale:

vi-Hani

This allows the application to distinguish between a language and the writing system used to display it.

Language
   +
Script
   ↓
Localized experience

Vietnamese Chữ Nôm Support

One of Glyphora's distinctive areas is support for Vietnamese Chữ Nôm content.

The Flutter client includes the NomNaTong font and script-aware locale handling.

Example:

Locale.fromSubtags(
  languageCode: 'vi',
  scriptCode: 'Hani',
)

The project also contains a dedicated app_vi_Hani.arb localization resource, allowing interface elements such as translation actions to be represented through the Vietnamese Han-script locale.

This makes it possible to treat Chữ Nôm as part of the actual application language system instead of rendering it as an isolated special-case string.

Architecture

Glyphora is organized as a monorepo:

glyphora/
│
├── apps/
│   ├── mobile-flutter/   # Main Flutter client
│   ├── mobile-rn/        # React Native client / experiment
│   ├── admin/            # React administration dashboard
│   └── api/              # Node.js / TypeScript API
│
├── docs/
├── firebase.json
└── README.md

High-level system

┌──────────────────────────┐
│ Flutter Mobile Client    │
│ BLoC / Cubit             │
└────────────┬─────────────┘
             │
             ├───────────────┐
             │               │
             ▼               ▼
┌────────────────────┐   ┌─────────────────────┐
│ Firebase Services  │   │ Node.js / Express   │
│ Auth               │   │ TypeScript API      │
│ Firestore          │   └──────────┬──────────┘
│ Realtime Database  │              │
│ Storage            │              ▼
└────────────────────┘       ┌──────────────┐
                             │ Prisma       │
                             │ PostgreSQL   │
                             └──────────────┘
                                      ▲
                                      │
                           ┌──────────┴──────────┐
                           │ React Admin         │
                           │ Vite + TypeScript   │
                           └─────────────────────┘

Glyphora currently uses a hybrid backend model.

Firebase Authentication
        ↓
User identity / sessions

Firebase Storage
        ↓
Images and media

Firestore / Firebase services
        ↓
Real-time and still-migrating feature areas

Node.js / Express
        ↓
Server-side business logic

Prisma / PostgreSQL
        ↓
Users, posts, post versions, comments,
likes, bookmarks, reports, moderation,
interests and other migrated business data

A compatibility layer currently allows Flutter-era Firestore IDs and PostgreSQL UUIDs to coexist during the backend migration.

Flutter Application Structure

The Flutter application is organized primarily by feature.

lib/
├── app/
├── core/
├── data/
├── features/
│   ├── auth/
│   ├── chat/
│   ├── discover/
│   ├── feed/
│   ├── home/
│   ├── language/
│   ├── notes/
│   ├── post/
│   ├── profile/
│   ├── social/
│   └── translation/
└── shared/

Core features progressively follow boundaries such as:

domain
application
data
presentation

The goal is to keep UI, state orchestration, repository contracts, and data adapters from collapsing into a single layer.

State Management

Glyphora uses BLoC / Cubit for mutable UI state and orchestration.

Examples include:

AppLanguageCubit
AuthCubit
ChatCubit
FriendCubit
DiscoverCubit
FeedCubit
PostCubit
ProfileCubit

Provider is also used for dependency injection of repositories and long-lived dependencies. Its presence does not mean the application relies on ChangeNotifier as its main state-management architecture.

A typical flow looks like:

UI
 ↓
Cubit
 ↓
Repository
 ↓
Firebase adapter / HTTP service
 ↓
Backend or data source

Backend API Areas

The current Node.js API is divided into focused route groups:

account
auth
users
posts
comments
bookmarks
interests
reports
translations
admin
moderation

The API uses:

Express routing
Firebase-backed authentication middleware
Zod request validation
Prisma database access
PostgreSQL transactions where multiple writes must remain consistent
Idempotent write patterns for operations such as likes and bookmarks
Helmet and CORS middleware

Health Check

GET /health

The endpoint performs a real PostgreSQL query (SELECT 1) and reports whether the database is connected.

Authentication Flow

App launch
    ↓
Firebase initialization
    ↓
Auth state listener
    ↓
Logged in?
   /      \
 Yes      No
  ↓        ↓
App UI   Login

Firebase Authentication maintains the user session while the rest of the application reacts to authentication state.

Deep Links

The Flutter client uses app_links through a shared deep-link service.

The design allows external links to eventually resolve directly into application destinations such as:

Posts
Profiles
Chats
Other community content

React Native Client

The repository also contains a React Native / Expo client that acts as a second mobile implementation and experiment.

Implemented areas currently include:

Authentication context
Auth gate
Login
Registration
Feed
Post cards
Post detail
Create post
Post repository
App navigation
User and post models

The React Native client is not yet at feature parity with Flutter. Its messaging and profile areas currently remain placeholders, while Flutter is the main complete mobile client.

Tech Stack

Mobile

Flutter
Dart
Material 3
BLoC / Cubit
Provider for dependency injection
GoRouter
Dio
Flutter Quill

Secondary Mobile Client

React Native
Expo
TypeScript

Firebase

Firebase Authentication
Cloud Firestore
Firebase Realtime Database
Firebase Storage

Backend

Node.js
TypeScript
Express
Prisma ORM
PostgreSQL
Firebase Admin SDK
Zod
Vitest / Supertest

Admin

React
TypeScript
Vite
React Router
TanStack Query
Axios
Ant Design

Language & Localization

Flutter Localizations
Intl
Script-aware locale handling
NomNaTong font for Chữ Nôm
Shared Glyphora language configuration package

Backend Jobs

The API contains scheduled maintenance jobs for chat-message cleanup.

Examples:

apps/api/src/jobs/
├── cleanup_expired_chat_messages.ts
└── run_cleanup_expired_chat_messages.ts

Development command:

npm run job:cleanup-chat-messages:dev

Production builds can execute:

npm run job:cleanup-chat-messages

A deployment platform can trigger this command through a scheduler or cron service.

Getting Started

Clone

git clone https://github.com/chengyang1017/glyphora.git
cd glyphora

Flutter client

cd apps/mobile-flutter
flutter pub get
flutter run

The mobile application requires a configured Firebase project.

Admin dashboard

cd apps/admin
npm install
npm run dev

Build:

npm run build

API

cd apps/api
npm install
npm run dev

Type-check:

npm run typecheck

Build:

npm run build

The API requires its own environment configuration for services such as PostgreSQL and Firebase Admin credentials. Real secrets and environment files should not be committed.

Main Product Flow

Discover people and content
          ↓
        Posts
          ↓
 Multilingual versions
          ↓
      Conversation
          ↓
         Chat
          ↓
     Shared Notes
          ↓
Longer-term knowledge and community

Glyphora treats posts, chat, notes, languages, translation, and relationships as connected parts of the same community rather than unrelated features.

Project Goals

Glyphora explores how a modern social product can give language and writing-system diversity first-class support.

The long-term direction is broader than a conventional forum:

People
  +
Languages
  +
Writing Systems
  +
Conversation
  +
Translation
  +
Knowledge
  =
Glyphora

The project is especially interested in building useful infrastructure for languages and scripts that are often poorly supported in mainstream software.

Status

Active development.

The repository currently contains:

A feature-rich Flutter client
A React Native secondary client / experiment
A React administration application
A Node.js / TypeScript API
PostgreSQL + Prisma business data
Firebase authentication, real-time services, and media storage
Multilingual UI infrastructure
Script-aware language identity
Social relationships
Real-time chat
Shared notes
Multilingual post versions
Manual and AI-assisted translation flows
Reporting and moderation
Chữ Nôm-oriented language support

Current work focuses on architecture refinement, completing the Firebase → PostgreSQL migration, production readiness, and improving the overall product experience.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
.agents/skills		.agents/skills
.ai-code-tutor		.ai-code-tutor
.claude/skills		.claude/skills
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
apps		apps
docs		docs
.firebaserc		.firebaserc
.gitignore		.gitignore
README.md		README.md
README.zh-CN.md		README.zh-CN.md
firebase.json		firebase.json
skills-lock.json		skills-lock.json

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万文社 / Glyphora

Screenshots

Community Feed

Post / Content Detail

Real-time Chat

Multilingual UI

Vietnamese Chữ Nôm

Profile / Discover

Admin Dashboard

Feature Overview

Authentication & Accounts

User Profiles

Language Identity

Localized Names

Multilingual Profile Tags

Community & Posts

Feed & Discovery

Content Categories

Language Channels

Create Posts

Rich-text Content

Post Media

Post Detail

Likes

Comments & Replies

Comments

Replies

Bookmarks

Multilingual Post Versions

Translation Provenance

Manual Translation

AI Translation

Social Graph

Following

Friends

Blocking

Real-time Chat

Conversations

Messages

Chat Media

Emoji

Live Drafts

Message Lifecycle & Cleanup

Shared Notes

Post Editing & History

Reporting & Moderation

User Reporting

Moderation

Administration

User Interests

Settings & Security

Multilingual by Design

Vietnamese Chữ Nôm Support

Architecture

High-level system

Flutter Application Structure

State Management

Backend API Areas

Health Check

Authentication Flow

Deep Links

React Native Client

Tech Stack

Mobile

Secondary Mobile Client

Firebase

Backend

Admin

Language & Localization

Backend Jobs

Getting Started

Clone

Flutter client

Admin dashboard

API

Main Product Flow