Study Notes Hub – the platform I built because people were straight-up cheating with my free notes

Completed

From free notes getting printed as micro-xerox chits → to a proper paid platform with locked-down PDFs. Story of how I got fed up and built the thing myself.

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yo i finally shipped Study Notes Hub (again, but properly this time) 🔥

okay story time, because this one’s personal.

back in first year (sept 2024) i made a simple website – beautiful design, all my notes for free, hosted on github pages with files straight from the repo. thought i was helping people actually study.

then one day in first sem i walk into the exam hall and see tiny printed chits of MY exact notes everywhere. people weren’t learning, they were just cheating with my hard work.

got so pissed that i took the whole site down.

fast forward to oct 16 2025 – i’m still in college, still taking notes, but now i said fuck it.

if people want my notes so bad, they can pay for them. and this time? no printing, no downloading, no micro-xerox bullshit.

so in exactly 20 days (oct 16 → nov 5 2025) i rebuilt the entire thing from scratch:

→ live: https://study-notes-hub.vercel.app → repo is private now (sorry, no free code – learned that lesson the hard way)

what it does now

  • Google login (Better Auth is actually cracked, best auth experience i’ve ever had)
  • real payments via Dodo Payments (Indian gateway, payouts hit in like 2 days, way smoother than Razorpay for this)
  • buy once → lifetime access instantly
  • nuclear-level PDF viewer i’m stupidly proud of:
    • watermarks on page
    • no download, no print, no right-click, no keyboard shortcuts
    • first 2 pages free preview for any logged-in user
    • full file only after payment
  • files stored on Cloudflare R2, served through signed 3-minute URLs (zero direct links ever)
  • progress tracking (pure localStorage – i’m not tracking you lmao)
  • actually usable on mobile (i test it on my own phone every day)

tech stack (because y’all always ask)

  • Next.js 15 + React 19 (app router + server components everywhere)
  • TypeScript strict mode (zero anys, my editor yells at me and i love it)
  • Prisma + PostgreSQL (schema is clean af)
  • Better Auth + Google OAuth (sessions in DB, middleware protection on every route)
  • Cloudflare R2 (S3-compatible, dirt cheap, stupid fast edge delivery)
  • Dodo Payments (metadata + webhooks make the flow buttery)
  • Tailwind + shadcn/ui + Lucide icons (obviously)
  • pdf-lib (server-side preview generation) + PDF.js (client-side canvas rendering)
  • Biome for linting/formatting (faster than eslint + prettier combined)

the paranoid stuff i lost sleep over (and flex about)

  • server-side preview PDFs: the first 2 pages are literally a brand new PDF generated with pdf-lib, you cannot grab the original
  • signed URLs expire in 180s (full) / 60s (preview)
  • webhook verification with proper signature + timestamp + idempotency keys (zero chance of double charging)
  • every protected route checked server-side via middleware (no “trust the client” nonsense)
  • purchase checks on every file request, even if you somehow guess the URL

yeah someone with a screen recorder can still steal it, but good luck making printable chits from a video lmao. this stops 99% of the lazy cheaters and that’s all i wanted.

i’ve already moved all my current sem notes there and started selling. people are actually buying (wild).

old free site? officially dead as of august 2025. new paid site went live the second this one was ready.

if you’re in college and tired of your notes getting leaked, or you just want clean paid notes instead of shady telegram groups – check it out.

and if you have feedback, bugs, or just wanna tell me i’m over-engineering… my dms are open.

thanks for letting me rant about my petty revenge project that accidentally became useful <3

#nextjs #indiedev #edtech #buildinpublic #college