PCBuildSage 🧙‍♂️🖥️

Plan a PC in plain language, using only parts in stock at Indian retailers today, with exact totals, buy links, and compatibility checked by code, not the AI.

India is supported today. More countries are coming, and contributions are welcome: a retailer is one JSON profile, no code required.

🌐 Live demo: pcbuildsage.onrender.com. It runs on free hosting, so the first visit after a quiet spell can take about a minute to wake up. Bring a free Gemini or OpenRouter API key.

Why PCBuildSage?

A chatbot with web search can talk about PC parts, but it only sees the pages its search happens to find, and it does the maths itself. Indian price-comparison sites see real stock, but you can't tell them "I already own an RTX 4070, build a quiet PC around it". PCBuildSage does both: you describe what you want, and an AI consultant builds from the whole in-stock catalog, while code handles the totals and the compatibility checks.

What you get:

Hosted demo

pcbuildsage.onrender.com:

• India catalog, refreshed twice a day from Indian retailers such as MDComputers, PrimeABGB, Vedant Computers, PC Studio and Kryptronix.
• Bring your own key. Use a free key from Google AI Studio (Gemini) or OpenRouter, which has free models. The demo never uses server-side keys.
• Your key stays in your browser. It's kept in this tab's session storage and sent with each request only to reach your provider. It's never written to disk, stored in a database, or logged on the server.
• Your chats stay in your browser too (IndexedDB). The server keeps no sessions.

Quick start (local)

Prerequisites: Node 20+, Python 3.11+

git clone https://github.com/ManishModak/pcbuildsage
cd pcbuildsage
npm install
pip install -r scraper/requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env   # then fill in your LLM API keys

Web app

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. The wizard walks you through setup, scraping, and building.

Local mode has no login and holds your .env keys, so it only listens on 127.0.0.1, and its API refuses requests from other websites or other host names. To use it from another device on your network on purpose, run npx next dev --webpack -H 0.0.0.0 and list the host names you'll use in PCBUILDSAGE_ALLOWED_HOSTS (comma-separated, e.g. 192.168.1.20,desk.lan). Anyone on that network can then use it.

Terminal (CLI)

node bin/pcbuildsage.js

The first run launches an interactive setup, then drops you into a REPL. Type /help to see all commands. Commands also work one-shot:

node bin/pcbuildsage.js ask "₹80,000 Blender + 1440p gaming build, white case"
node bin/pcbuildsage.js validate --parts mybuild.json

Run npm link once if you'd rather type pcbuildsage instead of node bin/pcbuildsage.js.

Sample database (optional)

To try it without scraping, generate a small sample catalog from fixtures:

npm run generate-sample-db

Docker (self-hosting)

The container runs in hosted-demo mode by default and listens on port 10000. For local mode, set PCBUILDSAGE_DEPLOYMENT_MODE=local:

docker build -t pcbuildsage .
docker run -d -p 127.0.0.1:3000:10000 -e PCBUILDSAGE_DEPLOYMENT_MODE=local pcbuildsage

Then open http://localhost:3000.

How it works

data/profiles/*.json ──▶ Python scraper (Crawl4AI) ──▶ SQLite (products.db)
   community-made          CSS selectors + AI fallback         │
                                                               ▼
data/registry/*.json ──▶ deterministic rules engine ◀── AI chat consultant
   community spec DB       sockets · DDR · wattage · fit      (your LLM, via tools)
                                     ▲
                       web-grounded AI research fills gaps
                       for brand-new hardware (advisory only)

• Profiles describe how to scrape each retailer. If selectors break after a site redesign, an AI extraction fallback keeps data flowing.
• The registry holds curated component specs (socket, TDP, dimensions) with their sources. The AI can research brand-new hardware on the web; its findings become draft registry entries that contributors review.
• The rules engine has the last word on compatibility. The AI proposes; deterministic checks review. Every rule is open source and unit-tested.

Contributing: most contributions need zero code

The most valuable contributions are data files, not code:

Every data file has a JSON Schema under data/schemas/, so your editor autocompletes and CI validates automatically:

npm run validate:data

FAQ

Is it free? Yes, MIT licensed. You only pay your own LLM provider, or nothing at all with a free key or a local Ollama model.

Which countries work? India today. Adding a country means writing retailer profiles (JSON, no code), and we'd love the help. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Why does the demo ask for an API key? The demo runs on free hosting with no budget for AI usage, so you bring your own key. Gemini and OpenRouter both offer free keys.

Does it work offline? Scraped data, search, and compatibility checks work fully offline. Chat needs whatever your model needs (a local Ollama model is fully offline).

Is my data private? Yes. Locally, all data, databases, and keys stay on your machine. On the demo, chats stay in your browser, and your key lives in this tab's session storage. It's sent with each request only to reach your provider, and never written to disk, stored, or logged on the server.

Found a security issue? Please report it privately; see SECURITY.md.

⭐ Show your support

If PCBuildSage is useful to you, please star the repo. It helps more builders find it.

License

MIT © PCBuildSage contributors