Forge of Ideas

You can find a video demonstration here

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Forge of Ideas is a productivity desktop application built with Electron + React + TypeScript + Vite.
Its goal is simple: help you organize, prioritize, and forge (develop) your ideas — while enforcing a healthy rule:

You can only work on ONE idea at a time.

This app was born from a personal struggle: juggling too many projects at once and finishing none. Forge of Ideas solves that by giving you a structured list for storing ideas and a single Forge slot where only one idea can be actively worked on at a time.

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✨ Features

🗂 The Ideas Panel

• Displays your ideas in a scrollable sidebar list, color-coded by priority.
• Navigate through pages using elevator-style up/down buttons, or add new ideas with the + button.
• Filter ideas quickly using the search bar at the top.
• Priority counters at the top show how many ideas exist per priority level (displayed as colored hexagons).
• Each idea can have:
  • Name
  • Description
  • Priority (1 to 3, represented by color — orange, teal, or gray)
• Click an idea to select it and view its details.

🔨 The Forge

• The center panel shows the currently selected idea in detail.
• When ready, you can Forge an idea — moving it into active development.
• A forged idea cannot be edited or sent back to the list.
• You must resolve it by either:
  • Marking it as Forged (completed), or
  • Deleting it (abandoned)
• Once resolved, the Forge slot becomes free again.

📋 The Detail Panel

• The right panel shows a focused view of the selected idea.
• From here you can:
  • Forge it (start working on it)
  • Edit it (update name, description, or priority)
  • Delete it

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📦 Installation (Nix / Home Manager)

Forge of Ideas is distributed as a Nix flake and is meant to be consumed via Home Manager.

1. Add the flake input

In your flake.nix, add Forge of Ideas as an input and pass it through to your Home Manager configuration:

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
    home-manager.url = "github:nix-community/home-manager";
    forge-of-ideas.url = "github:menezess42/forgeOfIdeas";
  };

  outputs = { nixpkgs, home-manager, forge-of-ideas, ... }@inputs: {
    homeConfigurations."your-username" = home-manager.lib.homeManagerConfiguration {
      pkgs = nixpkgs.legacyPackages.x86_64-linux;
      extraSpecialArgs = { inherit forge-of-ideas; };
      modules = [ ./home.nix ];
    };
  };
}

2. Add the package in home.nix

Receive forge-of-ideas as an argument and add the package to home.packages:

{ config, pkgs, lib, forge-of-ideas, ... }:
{
  home.packages = with pkgs; [
    forge-of-ideas.packages.x86_64-linux.default
    # ... your other packages
  ];
}

3. Apply

home-manager switch --flake .#your-username

After that, forge-of-ideas will be available in your $PATH.

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🛠 Development

The project is fully configured for development using Nix.
This is the recommended — and simplest — way to work on Forge of Ideas.

After cloning the repository:

nix develop

This enters the development shell, providing:

• Node.js
• Electron
• Vite
• TypeScript
• Tailwind
• ESLint
• All project tooling configured exactly as expected

Once inside the devShell, start the app in development mode:

npm run dev

No other global dependencies or manual setup are required.

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🧰 Technology Stack

Forge of Ideas is built with:

• Electron (desktop runtime)
• React 19 (UI)
• TypeScript (type safety)
• Vite (frontend bundler + dev server)
• Zustand (state management)
• electron-builder (packaging)

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📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.
See the LICENSE file for details.