TaxGPT

Canada’s AI tax chatbot.

This is a tiny little Next.js app to help Canadians find relevant options to file their taxes for free, and ask general questions about taxes in Canada.

• TaxGPT is not sponsored by any company, it’s a 100% free service with no affiliations.
• TaxGPT is also not a Government of Canada service.
• I used Typebot for the chatbot interaction.
• The adorable Canadian maple leaf mascot is Tyler Benning’s.

Check it out @ taxgpt.ca 🤑

Getting started

Install npm

npm is a javascript package manager. It downloads project dependencies and runs node applications.

You'll need node version v12 or higher to run the app.

Install docker

A docker container allows a developer to package up an application and all of its parts. This means we can build an app in any language, in any stack, and then run it anywhere — whether locally or on a server.

Environment variables

There are 3 env vars you should know about. All are technically optional.

• TYPEBOT_ID: This is the URL slug for Typebot. If you don’t have one, the chat window will be empty.
• ANALYTICS_ID: This is your Google analytics ID. Very optional.
• GITHUB_SHA: This is the app version, basically. Also very optional.

Build and run with npm

# install dependencies
npm install

# run application in 'dev' mode
# (ie, the server restarts when you save a file)
npm run dev

# run application in 'prod' mode
npm start

The app should be running at http://localhost:3000/.

On a Mac, press Control + C to quit the running application.

Run tests with npm

# run unit tests
npm test

# run linting
npm run lint

Build and run as a Docker container

# build an image locally
docker build -t pcraig3/vacs:<tag> --build-arg GITHUB_SHA_ARG=<tag> --build-arg TYPEBOT_ID_ARG=123 --build-arg TANALYTICS_ID_ARG=123 .

# run the container
docker run -it -p 3000:3000 pcraig3/vacs:<tag>

The container should be running at http://localhost:3000/.

On a Mac, press Control + C to quit the running docker container.

Deploy to Cloud Run

Obviously you can't push your stuff to my Cloud Run, but if somehow you were interested in putting up a copycat version, these steps will work.

# build and upload a container
gcloud builds submit --tag gcr.io/tax-gpt/tax-gpt:<tag>

# deploy container to Cloud Run
gcloud run deploy --image gcr.io/tax-gpt/tax-gpt:<tag> --platform managed

Building for Cloud Run

Note that if you have an M1 Mac, you need to build for the linux/amd platform otherwise you will spend 3 hours barking up the wrong tree trying to debug the PORT environment variable.

# build an image locally for the linux/amd platform
docker buildx build --platform linux/amd64 -t pcraig3/vacs:<tag> --build-arg GITHUB_SHA_ARG=<tag> --build-arg TYPEBOT_ID_ARG=123 --build-arg TANALYTICS_ID_ARG=123 .