EvoDeck

An AI-native collaborative canvas that turns conversation into an evolving, interactive decision workspace.

Description

EvoDeck turns plain-language requests into interactive visual workspaces for planning, research, and decision-making. Teams can generate charts, checklists, forms, flowcharts, decision matrices, and live-data desks; target individual widgets with @mentions; scrub a revision timeline; and branch alternate futures without overwriting the original decision trail.

The response is the workspace itself—not a chatbot beside a dashboard. EvoDeck combines generative UI, validated AI operations, PostgreSQL-backed history, real-time collaboration primitives, Trigger.dev workflows, and ClickHouse-backed live signals.

Why it matters

• Start with intent: describe the workspace you need in natural language.
• Make the answer interactive: generated charts, controls, tables, and checklists are real UI.
• Edit precisely: every widget has a stable name, so @mentions can update one object without replacing the canvas.
• Preserve decision memory: meaningful changes become append-only revisions on a scrubbable timeline.
• Explore safely: fork a historical frame into a scenario branch while keeping the main path intact.
• Use real signals: source adapters can fetch live data and turn it into visual, source-backed desks.

Demo in four moves

1. Create a workspace and ask: “Create a launch command center with a checklist, content calendar, risks, and a decision flow.”
2. Interact with the generated workspace—check an item, open a control, or rearrange a card.
3. Update one widget directly: @content-plan add a launch-day social post and make the first item high priority.
4. Scrub the timeline, choose Explore scenario, and compare a new direction without changing the original decision trail.

Architecture

Layer	What it does
Next.js + React	Delivers the collaborative canvas, chat experience, and workspace routes.
OpenUI	Provides typed, interactive building blocks for charts, tables, forms, checklists, and other generated UI.
AI orchestration	Converts user intent into validated operations such as adding or updating a widget.
PostgreSQL + Drizzle	Stores users, workspaces, messages, collaborators, revisions, and scenario branches.
Trigger.dev	Runs durable chat sessions with chat.agent(), source-sync and multi-step research workflows, including scheduled Hacker News sync.
ClickHouse	Stores and queries source events for live-data desks and analytical views.

Trigger.dev and ClickHouse flow

For a live-data request, EvoDeck detects the intent and calls a source adapter such as weather, Hacker News, RSS, GitHub, markets, or foreign exchange. The result is rendered immediately when possible and inserted into ClickHouse when credentials are configured. If an inline sync fails, EvoDeck queues sync-source or research-workspace on Trigger.dev; the worker performs the fetch and writes normalized events to ClickHouse.

ClickHouse is not used for transactional workspace state: PostgreSQL remains the system of record for users, messages, revisions, and branches. ClickHouse stores event-shaped live signals in the events table, keyed by workspace, source, event type, and timestamp. This separation keeps collaboration history durable while making live signals easy to query and aggregate.

Built with

Next.js 16 React 19 TypeScript OpenUI AI SDK Trigger.dev ClickHouse PostgreSQL Drizzle ORM Zustand

Run locally

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20 or newer
• Docker Desktop (for PostgreSQL)
• An AI provider key, or a local OpenAI-compatible endpoint
• ClickHouse Cloud and Trigger.dev are optional for the basic canvas; they are needed for the full background-sync/live-event path

Setup

cp .env.example .env.local
npm install

docker compose up -d
npm run db:migrate:sql
npm run db:seed
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. The seed command creates a starter workspace; it is optional if you want to begin with a new workspace.

AI provider configuration

Set AI_PROVIDER in .env.local, then restart the app:

Provider	Required environment	Notes
openai (default)	OPENAI_API_KEY	Also supports OpenRouter, LM Studio, and Ollama through OPENAI_BASE_URL.

To run the app with GPT-5.6, use:

AI_PROVIDER=openai
OPENAI_MODEL=gpt-5.6

The OpenAI adapter automatically omits a custom temperature for GPT-5.6 reasoning models and retries without it if an endpoint reports that temperature is unsupported.

ClickHouse setup

Create a ClickHouse Cloud service, copy its connection details from Connect, and set CLICKHOUSE_URL, CLICKHOUSE_USER, CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD, and CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE in .env.local. Then initialize the database and event table:

npm run clickhouse:init
npm run clickhouse:events

Without ClickHouse credentials, ordinary workspaces still run. Live requests can use freshly fetched in-memory data, but events will not be persisted for later analytical queries.

Trigger.dev setup

Create a Trigger.dev project, set TRIGGER_SECRET_KEY, and start the local worker in a second terminal:

npm run trigger:dev

The worker loads tasks from src/trigger, including:

• sync-source: fetches one source and writes its events to ClickHouse.
• research-workspace: runs a multi-step Hacker News + RSS workflow with triggerAndWait.
• sync-hackernews-schedule: runs every 30 minutes when DEFAULT_WORKSPACE_ID is set.

If a live sync can run inline, the app uses that result immediately. Trigger.dev provides the durable asynchronous path for queued work, retries, logging, and scheduled execution.

EvoDeck also includes the evodeck-chat-agent Trigger chat task. It uses Trigger.dev’s durable session lifecycle and server-side access-token helpers so a conversation can resume across refreshes and worker restarts while continuing to use the configured EvoDeck AI provider.

Useful scripts

Command	Purpose
npm run dev	Start the Next.js development server.
npm run build	Create a production build.
npm run lint	Run ESLint.
npm run trigger:dev	Start the local Trigger.dev worker.
npm run openui:generate	Refresh the committed server-safe OpenUI prompt and schema.
npm run clickhouse:init	Verify ClickHouse connectivity and create the app database.
npm run clickhouse:events	Create the ClickHouse events table.
npm run db:migrate:sql	Apply the checked-in PostgreSQL migrations.
npm run db:seed	Create a demo workspace.
npm run db:studio	Open Drizzle Studio for the PostgreSQL database.

How Codex and GPT-5.6 were used

Codex was used as the coding agent throughout the build: it inspected the existing repository, implemented and refined the Next.js application, helped structure the OpenUI widget model, added validated workspace operations, built PostgreSQL persistence and timeline branching, connected live-data adapters, and verified the local development workflow.

GPT-5.6 serves two related roles:

1. In the product: when OPENAI_MODEL=gpt-5.6, it interprets workspace requests and produces structured, schema-checked operations that add or update visual widgets.
2. During development: it was used through Codex for architecture exploration, implementation, debugging, documentation, and iteration on the interaction model.

Project assets

• EvoDeck mark
• EvoDeck wordmark
• Hero canvas artwork
• Architecture diagram
• Demo flow diagram