HouseLearning Gists (Blobs)

The free, serverless file‑sharing platform powering https://gists.houselearning.org

HouseLearning Gists — also known as Blobs — is a serverless file-hosting and sharing system built on Firebase Firestore. It is designed to fit provider free quotas; quota overages are not guaranteed to cost $0.
It enables users to upload, store, share, fork, and manage files without any backend servers or paid hosting.

This project is designed for:

• Students
• Developers
• Educators
• Anyone who needs a lightweight, GitHub‑Gist‑style file sharing tool
• Projects that must run on $0 infrastructure

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🚀 Features

🔹 File Uploads (Blobs)

• Supports HTML, CSS, JS, text, images, audio, video, and binary files
• Max file size: 15MB (soon to increase)
• Per‑user quota: 45MB (soon to increase)
• Chunked upload system (256KB per chunk)
• No Firebase Storage required

🔹 Public & Private Visibility

• Public gists appear in Trending and Global Feed after moderation approval
• Private gists are visible only to the owner

🔹 Public Upload Moderation

• New public uploads stay out of public feeds until a moderator approves them.
• Moderation is manual and uses no AI inference, paid API, or moderation Cloud Function invocation.
• Only designated SafeAI administrators can approve or block pending uploads; Firestore rules validate the decision and reviewer identity.
• Owners can see whether their public upload is awaiting a check, approved, blocked, or awaiting manual review. Private uploads are not submitted to moderation.

🔹 Forking

• Users can fork any public gist
• Forks preserve file name, content, and metadata
• Forks count toward user quota

🔹 Sharing Modal

Includes:

• Mail (mailto link with file name + link)
• Copy Link
• Forum Post (opens HouseLearning Forum with prefilled content)

🔹 Likes

• One‑click like toggle
• Stored per‑user in /blobs/{id}/likes/{uid}
• Like count stored on blob metadata

🔹 Follow System

• Users can follow each other
• Stored in:
  • /user_profiles/{uid}/followers/{followerUid}
  • /user_profiles/{uid}/following/{targetUid}
• Follower count stored on profile

🔹 Profile Pages

• Public profiles for every user
• Shows avatar, bio, followers, recent uploads, and all uploads
• Follow/Unfollow integrated

🔹 Inactivity Cleanup

• Blobs older than 45 days without access are marked deleted
• Users can still Recover & Download

🔹 Trending Algorithm

• Based on view count
• Updated in real time

Moderation deployment

The Gists frontend is hosted by GitHub Pages. Firestore rules and indexes are configured in the HouseLearning home repository; deploy them with firebase deploy --only firestore:rules,firestore:indexes after verifying the project's billing plan and free-quota budget. No moderation model, secret, or moderation Cloud Function is required. Then, with an authorized service account in GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS, run npm run moderate:legacy once to queue older active public Gists. The migration performs bounded Firestore reads/writes and must remain within the project's free quotas. Until rules/indexes are deployed, the production project does not enforce this moderation lifecycle.