Pair Research

Pair Research is a group collaboration method developed by Miller, Zhang, Gilbert, and Gerber to pair members together each round so they can work through one another’s blockers and projects. Based on the original Pair Research method from Delta Lab, this application extends the earlier Google Sheets and spreadsheet-based workflow into a full web app where users can create customized groups, generate pairings, view analytics, and support collaboration across specific subgroups, such as professors and students in a research lab.

What the app does

• lets people create and join groups
• tracks each member's current task
• collects "how much can I help?" ratings between members
• builds pairings for the current round
• shows live group updates in realtime
• supports group settings, roles, invitations, and profile avatars

Tech stack

• TanStack Start + Vite
• React 19 + TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS v4 + shadcn/ui
• Prisma for app data
• Supabase for auth and Postgres-backed app storage
• Cloudflare Workers for deployment
• Cloudflare Durable Objects for group pairing realtime coordination
• Cloudflare R2 for avatar storage
• Cloudflare Turnstile for bot protection
• Vitest + Testing Library for unit and component tests
• Playwright for end-to-end tests

Project structure

src/
  routes/      Route files and page entry points
  features/    Feature code by domain
    auth/      Sign in, sign up, password reset, redirects
    account/   Profile editing and avatar upload
    groups/    Group creation, invites, tasks, pairing, settings
    home/      Public landing page
  shared/      Shared UI, config, server helpers, styles
prisma/        Prisma schema and generated client
e2e/           Playwright tests
tests/         Test setup and mocks

Main routes

• / public home page
• /login sign in
• /signup sign up
• /forgot-password request password reset
• /reset-password set a new password from the reset link
• /groups list joined and pending groups
• /groups/create create a group
• /groups/$slug active group page
• /groups/$slug/settings group settings
• /account profile and avatar settings

Pairing flow

Each member adds a task for the current round and rates how much they can help on other members' tasks. The app uses those ratings to build pairings.

The pairing code lives under src/features/groups/lib/pairing. It tries a stable-roommates pass first, then fills any remaining unmatched people with maximum-weight matching. This keeps pairings stable when possible and still gives good results for hard or odd-sized pools.

Development

For local setup, environment variables, Cloudflare Wrangler login, testing, preview, and deployment notes, see DEVELOPMENT.md.

For code organization, contribution rules, file size guidelines, comments, TSDoc, and testing expectations, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

For the stable app structure, runtime boundaries, and data flow, see ARCHITECTURE.md.

Quick start:

pnpm install
cp .env.example .env
pnpm dev

The local development server runs on http://localhost:3000/.

Before opening a pull request, run:

pnpm run lint:fix
pnpm test
pnpm preview