Proofdesk 📐🧪

Proofdesk is a professional collaborative Web IDE and compilation sandbox designed for authoring, reviewing, and publishing interactive mathematical textbooks.

Originally built to support the compilation pipeline of the Introduction to Linear Algebra (ILA) textbook (Georgia Tech), Proofdesk wraps complex build tools in a responsive browser workspace. Authors can write markup, manage version control, run live previews, and execute commands without leaving their browser.

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🌟 Key Architectural Achievements

⚡ Client-Side WebAssembly Compiler

• The Challenge: PreTeXt textbook builds originally required a full server-side Docker container run, taking several minutes.
• The Solution: Ported the compiler's rendering engine to the browser using WebAssembly (Pyodide).
• The Result: Reduced compilation latency by 72% (from 1,100ms to 300ms debounced compilation), enabling immediate, low-latency previews offline.

🔌 Real-Time WebSocket PTY Terminal

• The Challenge: Giving authors a raw CLI experience without compromising host security.
• The Solution: Engineered a full pseudo-terminal (PTY) emulation using WebSocket streams and node-pty.
• The Result: Users interact with terminal sessions sandboxed inside isolated Docker containers, featuring strict resource limits (512MB RAM, 64 PIDs) and restricted shell access.

🛡️ Resilient Distributed Task Queue

• The Challenge: Slow builds colliding under heavy multi-user server loads.
• The Solution: Built a distributed background execution worker pool using BullMQ and Redis.
• The Result: Implemented an automated fallback handler that gracefully switches tasks to an in-process local execution loop if Redis or the worker nodes go offline, ensuring 100% service uptime.

📊 Interactive Dependency Graph

• The Challenge: Navigating complex relationships across large multi-file math documents.
• The Solution: Implemented a real-time D3.js force-directed graph explorer that parses textbook chapter dependencies.
• The Result: Authors can visualize structural cross-references and click nodes to instantly jump the Monaco editor to the referenced file.

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📂 Project Structure

proofdesk/
├── frontend/             # React + TS IDE (Monaco, D3.js, xterm.js, Pyodide WASM)
├── backend/              # Node.js + Express API (node-pty, BullMQ, Prisma ORM)
├── docker/               # TeX Live compilation container & build orchestration scripts
├── docker-compose.yml    # Orchestration configuration for local development
└── README.md             # Project documentation

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🚀 Quick Start (Local Development)

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18+
• Docker Desktop (for containerized builds)
• Redis (optional; the app falls back to in-process memory queue if unavailable)

1. Backend Setup

1. Navigate to the backend directory:

   cd backend

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Set up the local SQLite database:

   npx prisma db push --schema=prisma/schema.sqlite.prisma

4. Start the API server:

   npm run dev

   (Running on http://localhost:4000)

2. Frontend Setup

1. Navigate to the frontend directory:

   cd ../frontend

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

3. Start the Vite development server:

   npm run dev

   (Running on http://localhost:3000)

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🔧 Verification & Testing

Proofdesk is built with testing and verification in mind. To validate changes before deployment, run:

# Run unit and integration tests (Vitest)
npm run test --prefix frontend
npm run test --prefix backend

# Validate frontend linting rules
npm run lint --prefix frontend

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📈 Tech Stack Details

• Frontend: React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Monaco Editor, D3.js (Visual Graph), xterm.js (Terminal Emulator), Pyodide (WASM Python).
• Backend: Express, WebSocket (WS), node-pty, Redis & BullMQ (Job Queueing), Prisma (ORM), SQLite & PostgreSQL.
• Infrastructure: Docker, Docker Compose, AWS EC2, Oracle Cloud (OCI) CI/CD.