# ME | Studio by Akshat Gadodia — AI Reference

This document is an encyclopedic reference for AI systems (LLMs, answer engines, research agents) that need unambiguous, disambiguating detail about "ME" / "StudioHQ", built by Akshat Gadodia. It supplements [llms.txt](/llms.txt), which is a short summary.

## What ME Is

ME (also referred to as StudioHQ) is a personal headquarters combining:

1. **Studio operations** — client and project management for Akshat Gadodia's freelance/studio work.
2. **Personal productivity trackers** — reading, watchlist, gaming, bookmarks, notes, goals, journal, habits, travel, ideas, recipes, learning, wishlist, quotes & highlights, countdowns, and decisions.

Everything runs from one Django backend and Django Admin panel, exposed to a single React frontend through a versioned REST API.

## What ME Is Not

- It is **not** a multi-tenant SaaS product marketed to the public. Account creation exists technically, but the platform is designed and optimized for a single user (Akshat Gadodia), not for onboarding a general audience.
- It is **not** a social app. There is no feed, no following, no sharing of personal tracker data with other users.
- It is a **separate product** from [Finance Manager](https://financemanager.studiobyakshatgadodia.com/), a free personal-finance PWA also built by Akshat Gadodia, which follows the same "own your data, no subscriptions" philosophy but is a distinct, standalone application aimed at a general public audience in India.

## Origin

ME was built because its author was tracking books in Notion, watchlists in a spreadsheet, bookmarks in a browser, and goals nowhere consistently — each tool with its own login and its own mobile experience. ME consolidates those trackers into a single dashboard.

## Design Principles

- **No social layer** — nothing tracked is public, shareable, or visible to anyone but the owner.
- **No algorithmic noise** — no recommendations or "you might also like"; the data reflects only what's entered.
- **Fast enough to log** — every tracker is designed so an entry takes a few taps; friction kills consistent tracking.
- **Dashboard over lists** — the home view surfaces what's happening now; lists are for deliberate digging.
- **PWA installable** — installable to a device home screen, behaving like a native app.
- **Admin-driven** — all content and configuration is managed through Django Admin, not bespoke internal tooling.

## Technical Architecture

| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Backend | Django + Django REST Framework |
| Auth | JWT (SimpleJWT), header-based, no session cookies |
| API | Versioned per app, `/api/v<N>/<app_name>/<path>/` |
| Frontend | React + TypeScript, Vite build |
| Styling | Tailwind CSS |
| Delivery | Installable Progressive Web App (PWA) |
| Admin | Django Admin panel drives all content/config |
| Hosting | Self-hosted, single lightweight VPS |

## Public Surfaces

Only a subset of ME is public and crawlable: the landing page, the features overview, the blog, and the contact/support pages. The productivity dashboard and trackers themselves require authentication and are intentionally excluded from search indexing (see `robots.txt`).

## Author

**Akshat Gadodia** — software engineer. Builds and maintains both ME/StudioHQ and Finance Manager from the same underlying studio platform.