NipponDaily

Your multilingual gateway to Japanese news. NipponDaily is an AI-powered news aggregator that fetches Japan-related news, then processes articles with Google Gemini AI for executive briefings, cross-source synthesis, and credibility assessment. Read stories that matter to you—in your language.

• Consolidated AI Briefing: Synthesizes multiple news sources into a single, cohesive, high-level briefing with a primary headline and structured executive summary.
• Cross-Source Thematic Analysis: Dynamic analysis identifying relationships, consensus, or discrepancies between different publications.
• Multilingual AI Briefings: Real-time translation of synthesized briefings into a wide variety of target languages (supported by Nuxt UI locales/ISO 639-1).
• Interactive Regional Map & Filtering: Interactive SVG map of Japan to visualize news density and dynamically filter sources by region or launch targeted local news scans.
• Visual Trust Scoring: Multi-level credibility assessments (overall and per-source) directly evaluated by Google Gemini AI with HSL-color-gradient visuals.
• Customizable Discovery: Fine-grained filtering by traditional category channels and precise date ranges (preset or custom).
• Smart & Bilingual UI: Built with Nuxt 4, Vue 3, and Tailwind CSS 4 for an immersive, fast, responsive editorial layout that translates instantly between English and Japanese.
• Robust Security: Redis-based sliding-window rate limiting to manage API usage and costs.
• Developer Debug Mode: Specialized configuration flag to test rate limits, failures, and fallbacks without consuming API quotas.

🛠 Tech Stack

• Framework: Nuxt 4 (Vue 3, TypeScript)
• Styling: Tailwind CSS 4
• AI Engine: Google Gemini AI
• Search API: Tavily Search API
• Data/Cache: Upstash Redis (for rate limiting)
• Testing: Vitest, Docker (for integration tests)

📋 Quick Setup

1. Install dependencies:

   pnpm install

2. Set up environment:

   cp .env.example .env

   Configure the following in .env:

   # Required: APIs
   GEMINI_API_KEY=your_gemini_api_key_here
   TAVILY_API_KEY=your_tavily_api_key_here
   
   # Required for production (Rate Limiting)
   UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL="your_upstash_redis_url"
   UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN="your_upstash_redis_token"

3. Start development server:

   pnpm dev

   Visit http://localhost:3000

🔑 Environment Variables

See .env.example for reference. Configure these in your .env file:

Variable	Required	Description	Default
GEMINI_API_KEY	Yes	Google Gemini API key for AI processing.	-
TAVILY_API_KEY	Yes	Tavily Search API key for news discovery.	-
GEMINI_MODEL	No	Google Gemini model(s) to use, comma-separated.	gemini-2.5-flash,gemini-3-flash-preview
UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL	Yes*	Upstash Redis URL for rate limiting.	-
UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN	Yes*	Upstash Redis token for rate limiting.	-
RATE_LIMIT_MAX_REQUESTS	No	Maximum API requests allowed per IP per day.	3
DEBUG_ERROR_UI	No	Set to true to force error UI components for testing.	false
TEST_SRH_URL	No	URL for Serverless Redis HTTP in integration tests.	See .env.example

* Required for production and to enable rate limiting features.

📜 Available Commands

Command	Description
pnpm dev	Start development server on localhost:3000
pnpm build	Create a production-ready build
pnpm start	Run the production server locally
pnpm generate	Static site generation (SSG)
pnpm preview	Preview production build
pnpm test	Run tests in watch mode
pnpm test:run	Run tests once
pnpm test:coverage	Run tests with coverage report
pnpm test:integration	Run integration tests (requires Docker)
pnpm test:coverage:all	Run all tests (unit + integration) with coverage
pnpm docker:up	Start SRH (Serverless Redis HTTP) services
pnpm docker:down	Stop SRH services
pnpm lint	Lint and auto-fix code
pnpm format	Format code with Prettier
pnpm type-check	Perform TypeScript type checking
pnpm check-qa	Run all QA checks (lint, format, type-check, build, test)

🧪 Testing

NipponDaily uses a tiered testing strategy:

• Unit Tests: Test individual components and utilities (test/unit).
• Server Tests: Verify API endpoints and server-side logic (test/server).
• Integration Tests: Test against a real Redis instance using Serverless Redis HTTP (SRH) via Docker (test/integration).

To run integration tests locally:

# Start Docker services
pnpm docker:up

# Run integration tests
pnpm test:integration

⚠️ Limitations

• Article Count: 20 maximum per request.
• Rate Limiting: Configurable via RATE_LIMIT_MAX_REQUESTS (default: 3 requests per day per IP).
• Date Range: Search results limited to 365 days, must be after 2000-01-01.
• Dependencies: Requires both Tavily API and Google Gemini API keys.