plant-man/README.md

Plant-Man

Plant-Man is a mobile-first plant care tracker. The current baseline is intentionally small: a React + Vite frontend, an ASP.NET Core Minimal API backend, EF Core, and SQLite.

The app currently lets you test the core loop:

• view seeded plants
• see due or upcoming watering tasks
• mark a watering task done
• persist that action to SQLite
• refresh the dashboard from the API

Stack

• Frontend: React, Vite, TypeScript
• Backend: ASP.NET Core Minimal APIs
• Data: EF Core with SQLite
• Local environment: VS Code Dev Container

Requirements

This project is intended to run inside a VS Code Dev Container. Your local desktop can be a thin client.

Recommended setup:

• Windows VM: runs VS Code and connects to the development machine over Remote SSH.
• Debian/Linux VM: hosts the repository, Docker, and the dev container.
• Dev container: provides the app toolchain.

With this setup, the Windows VM does not need Node.js, .NET, SQLite, or Docker installed locally. Those tools run on the remote Debian VM or inside the dev container.

Windows VM:

• Visual Studio Code
• VS Code Remote SSH extension
• VS Code Dev Containers extension

Debian/Linux VM:

• Docker Engine
• SSH access from the Windows VM

Provided inside the dev container:

• Node.js LTS and npm
• .NET 10 SDK
• SQLite CLI tools

Getting Started

From the Windows VM, connect to the Debian/Linux VM with VS Code Remote SSH. Open the repo on the remote machine, then run:

Dev Containers: Reopen in Container

The container runs dependency setup automatically:

dotnet restore plant-manager.sln
dotnet tool restore
cd plant-manager-web && npm install

Start the API and frontend together:

bash scripts/dev.sh

Or start the API in one terminal:

dotnet run --project plant-manager

And the frontend in another terminal:

cd plant-manager-web
npm run dev

Open:

• Frontend: http://localhost:5173
• API health: http://localhost:5074/api/health
• API root: http://localhost:5074

The Vite dev server proxies /api requests to http://localhost:5074.

Database

SQLite is configured in plant-manager/appsettings.json:

"DefaultConnection": "Data Source=App_Data/plant-man.db"

On startup, the API applies EF Core migrations with Migrate() and seeds a few starter plants. This keeps the schema versioned while the project is still easy to test.

The default starter taxons are tracked in docs/starter-taxa.md.

Local SQLite files are ignored by Git.

If you have a local database created before migrations were added, delete plant-manager/App_Data/plant-man.db and restart the API to recreate it from migrations.

Project Structure

.devcontainer/              Dev container definition
docs/                       Minimal current schema and ERD
plant-manager/              ASP.NET Core Minimal API backend
  Data/                     EF Core DbContext, models, and seeding
  Program.cs                API endpoints and app startup
plant-manager-web/          React + Vite frontend
  src/                      App, API client, types, and styles

Current API

• GET /api/health
• GET /api/plants
• GET /api/plants/{id}
• POST /api/plants
• PUT /api/plants/{id}
• DELETE /api/plants/{id}
• GET /api/plant-taxa
• POST /api/plant-taxa
• PUT /api/plant-taxa/{id}
• DELETE /api/plant-taxa/{id}
• GET /api/care-actions
• POST /api/care-actions
• PUT /api/care-actions/{id}
• DELETE /api/care-actions/{id}
• GET /api/action-resources
• POST /api/action-resources
• PUT /api/action-resources/{id}
• DELETE /api/action-resources/{id}
• GET /api/care-tasks/upcoming
• GET /api/action-logs
• POST /api/action-logs
• PUT /api/action-logs/{id}
• DELETE /api/action-logs/{id}

Example action log request:

{
  "plantId": 1,
  "careActionId": 1,
  "resources": [
    {
      "actionResourceId": 1,
      "quantity": 250,
      "unit": "ml"
    }
  ]
}