The Floor — AI Debater (MVP)

https://ai-debater-seven.vercel.app/ check this out

A local, no-paid-API-required AI debate opponent: pick a category, spin for a topic, take a stance, research for 5 minutes while the AI researches in parallel, then debate live by voice with a talking avatar.

What it uses (all free)

• LLM: Groq — free API key, generous free tier, very fast inference (needed for real-time debate to feel natural).
• Web search: DuckDuckGo via duckduckgo-search — no key required.
• Speech-to-text: your browser's built-in Web Speech API (Chrome/Edge). No key, no server round-trip.
• Text-to-speech: your browser's built-in speechSynthesis. No key.
• Avatar: a custom animated SVG face (no avatar API), mouth-synced to when the AI is speaking.

1. Get a free Groq API key

1. Go to https://console.groq.com and sign up (free).
2. Create an API key.
3. In backend/, create a file called .env:

GROQ_API_KEY=your_key_here

(Optional: set GROQ_MODEL=llama-3.3-70b-versatile or another Groq-hosted model — see https://console.groq.com/docs/models for current free models.)

2. Run the backend

cd backend
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate        # Windows: venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
uvicorn main:app --reload --port 8000

Check it's alive: open http://localhost:8000/api/health — you should see "groq_key_set": true.

3. Run the frontend

The frontend is plain HTML/JS, no build step. Simplest option:

cd frontend
python3 -m http.server 5500

Then open http://localhost:5500 in Chrome (Web Speech API support is best there). Allow camera access when prompted.

How it works

1. Welcome → category → wheel: topics come from a curated bank per category in backend/topics.py (edit freely to add your own).
2. Stance: you pick for/against, the AI automatically takes the other side.
3. Research (5 min, adjustable): on stance selection, the backend fires off build_research_brief() — DuckDuckGo search for both sides of the topic, summarized by Groq into a compact brief (key arguments, likely opponent points, pre-drafted rebuttals). This brief is what the AI draws on live, so it isn't reasoning from scratch mid-debate. Meanwhile you get a notes panel to do your own research in.
4. **Live