Next Bench 🪑

Find the right university without getting lost in the process.

A student-first platform for discovering institutions, exploring structured education profiles, and keeping your admission goals in one place.

Explore Next Bench ↗ · Search Institutes · Report a Bug · Request a Feature

✦ What is Next Bench?

Choosing where to study should not mean jumping between dozens of tabs, scattered institute pages, random reviews, and half-finished notes.

Next Bench brings institute discovery and student planning into one clean experience. Students can search universities, colleges, and tuition providers, open structured education profiles, sign in, maintain their personal information, and save admission goals and target universities.

The application is built around a Next.js frontend backed by Supabase, with institute content stored in PostgreSQL and rendered dynamically from structured MDX-like data.

The idea is simple: spend less time searching for information and more time deciding what is actually right for you.

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✨ Highlights

🔎 Institute Discovery Search across universities, colleges, and tuition providers from a dedicated discovery interface. Institute results can surface useful information such as location, rating, description, tags, and dedicated profile routes.	🎓 Dynamic Education Profiles Every institute can have its own /edu/[slug] page. Profile content is loaded from Supabase and transformed into structured sections for richer education pages instead of hard-coded static routes.
👤 Student Profiles Authenticated students get a personal /me area where profile information can be viewed and updated. Student data is persisted through Supabase-backed profile records.	🎯 Goals & Dream Universities Save a personal education goal and keep up to three target universities attached to your profile. It turns Next Bench from a directory into a lightweight student planning workspace.
🌓 Light + Dark Themes The UI supports persistent light and dark themes using client-side theme preferences. The interface is built with Once UI and custom styling for a modern, focused experience.	🧩 Structured Content Engine Education data supports names, descriptions, ratings, city/state metadata, tags, and rich MDX content. The institute page renderer can translate that stored content into reusable interface sections.

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🖥️ Product Preview

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⚙️ How it fits together

flowchart LR
    U["Student"] --> N["Next.js 16 App"]
    N --> S["Search Experience"]
    N --> E["Education Profiles"]
    N --> M["Student Workspace"]
    N --> A["Authentication"]

    S --> SB["Supabase"]
    E --> SB
    M --> SB
    A --> SB

    SB --> PG["PostgreSQL"]
    PG --> D["edu + profiles data"]

    E --> P["MDX / Content Parser"]
    P --> R["Dynamic UI Sections"]

    DK["Drizzle ORM / Kit"] --> PG

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🧱 Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Framework	Next.js 16
UI Runtime	React 19
Language	TypeScript 5.8
Design System	Once UI
Styling	Tailwind CSS 4, Sass, custom CSS
Backend / Data	Supabase
Database	PostgreSQL
ORM / Schema	Drizzle ORM + Drizzle Kit
Smooth Motion	Lenis
Image Processing	Sharp
Formatting	Biome
Deployment	Vercel

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🗂️ Repository Structure

next-bench/
├── backend/
│   └── python/              # Backend experimentation / workflow area
├── drizzle/                 # Database migration artifacts
├── mdx/                     # Education content / MDX resources
├── next-parser/
│   └── parser.js            # Content parsing utility
├── public/
│   ├── images/og/           # Social / preview assets
│   └── trademarks/
├── src/
│   ├── app/
│   │   ├── auth/            # Authentication flows
│   │   ├── edu/[slug]/      # Dynamic institute profiles
│   │   ├── me/              # Student profile + goals
│   │   ├── search/          # Institute discovery
│   │   ├── supabase/        # Supabase client
│   │   ├── ~/admin/         # Admin-facing route area
│   │   └── components/      # App-level UI
│   ├── components/
│   ├── db/
│   │   └── schema.ts        # Drizzle schema
│   └── resources/           # Theme, config and styles
├── drizzle.config.ts
├── next.config.mjs
├── package.json
└── README.md

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🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

You will need:

• Node.js 20+
• npm
• a Supabase project
• a PostgreSQL connection string if you plan to use the Drizzle database tooling

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/ThatKJ/next-bench.git
cd next-bench

2. Install dependencies

npm install

3. Configure environment variables

Create a .env.local file in the root of the project:

NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL=your_supabase_project_url
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_DEFAULT_KEY=your_supabase_publishable_key
DATABASE_URL=your_postgresql_connection_string

NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL and NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_PUBLISHABLE_DEFAULT_KEY are required by the application at runtime.

DATABASE_URL is used by the Drizzle configuration.

If you use Drizzle Kit directly and your shell does not expose DATABASE_URL, also provide it through a root .env file or export it in your environment.

4. Start development

npm run dev

Open:

http://localhost:3000

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🧬 Database

The current schema includes two core application domains:

profiles

Stores student information such as:

• name
• email
• city / state / country
• phone
• personal goal
• target universities
• creation timestamp

edu

Stores institute content such as:

• slug
• name
• description
• rating
• city
• state
• tags
• MDX content

Drizzle commands

The project includes Drizzle Kit as a development dependency, so you can use:

npx drizzle-kit generate

and:

npx drizzle-kit migrate

Make sure DATABASE_URL is configured before running database commands.

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🧭 Core App Routes

Route	Purpose
/	Landing page
/search	Search universities, colleges, and tuition providers
/edu/[slug]	Dynamic institute profile
/auth/...	Authentication flows
/me	Student profile, personal details, goals and target universities
/~/admin	Admin-facing route area

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🛠️ Development Commands

Command	Description
npm run dev	Start Next.js in development mode with Turbopack
npm run build	Create a production build
npm run start	Start the production server
npm run lint	Run the configured Next.js lint command
npm run biome-write	Format the repository with Biome
npm run export	Run the configured Next.js export command

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🗺️ Roadmap

Next Bench is still evolving.

• Institute search experience
• Dynamic education profile pages
• Supabase authentication integration
• Student profile management
• Goals and target universities
• Light / dark theme support
• Personalized student roadmaps

Personalized roadmap generation is visible in the current student workspace, but is intentionally disabled until the feature is ready.

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions, bug reports, and ideas are welcome.

# Fork the repo, then clone your fork
git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/next-bench.git
cd next-bench

# Create a branch
git checkout -b feature/your-feature

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development
npm run dev

When your changes are ready:

git add .
git commit -m "feat: describe your change"
git push origin feature/your-feature

Then open a Pull Request.

Before submitting, please make sure the app builds successfully:

npm run build

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🧪 Current Status

Next Bench is under active development.

Some repository areas—including the Python workflow directory and personalized roadmap UI—are currently placeholders or incomplete and should not yet be treated as production features.

If you find something that does not work as expected, please open an issue.

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🌱 Project History

This repository is maintained at ThatKJ/next-bench and is forked from sonamii/next-bench.

Credit to the original contributors and everyone who has helped shape the project.

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Built for students figuring out what comes next.

Search smarter. Compare clearly. Keep your goals in sight.

Try Next Bench ↗

If this project helps you, consider giving it a ⭐