finally.help

The stuff everyone assumes you already know, explained like you're 10 — for adults who feel behind.

Browse a library of plain-language explainers, generate your own for any topic, earn points and unlock games, and comment. One static front-end plus Cloudflare Pages Functions and a D1 database.

Stack

• Frontend: vanilla HTML/CSS/JS, no framework, no build step (index.html, styles.css, app.js).
• API: Cloudflare Pages Functions in functions/api/* (auth, economy, explainers, comments, games, and the LLM explain proxy).
• Database: Cloudflare D1 (SQLite). Schema in schema.sql.
• Auth: username/password with salted PBKDF2 hashing (lib/crypto.js) and HttpOnly cookie sessions.
• Hosting: Cloudflare Pages. Free tier, free TLS, CDN.

One-time setup

npm install
npx wrangler login

# 1. Create the database, then paste the printed database_id into wrangler.toml
npx wrangler d1 create finally-help-db

# 2. Create the tables (local + production)
npx wrangler d1 execute finally-help-db --local  --file=schema.sql
npx wrangler d1 execute finally-help-db --remote --file=schema.sql

# 3. Secrets for local dev
cp .dev.vars.example .dev.vars   # then edit in your real LLM_API_KEY

Run locally

npx wrangler pages dev .

Open the printed localhost URL, register an account, and everything (points, streak, comments) persists in your local D1.

Environment variables

Set these in the Cloudflare dashboard (Settings -> Variables) for production, and in .dev.vars for local:

• LLM_API_KEY — your Anthropic API key (read only by functions/api/explain.js).
• LLM_MODEL — model id, e.g. claude-sonnet-4-5.
• GAME_SECRET — long random string used to seal quiz answer tokens (optional locally, set it in prod).

Deploy

See DEPLOY.md.

License

MIT.