FormulAI

FormulAI is a premium-feeling AI formulation assistant for specialty chemical R&D teams. A chemist describes a target product, tunes sustainability and cost posture, picks a regulatory region, and gets back a structured concept card with ingredient ranges, trade-off commentary, regulatory flags, and a polished export view.

Who it's for

• Specialty chemical formulators exploring first-pass concepts
• Innovation teams comparing performance, cost, and sustainability posture
• Technical sales and applications groups preparing internal review cards

What it does

• Captures a formulation brief from a more cinematic control surface
• Streams structured JSON from the Groq API into a live formulation workspace
• Renders ingredient architecture, trade-off scoring, and regulatory watch-outs
• Saves recent formulation sessions in localStorage
• Exports a clean browser print view suitable for PDF handoff

Stack

• React + Vite frontend
• Tailwind CSS for styling
• Express API route for local development and Vercel deployment
• Groq Chat Completions API with JSON output mode

Local setup

1. Install dependencies:

   npm install --legacy-peer-deps

2. Create an environment file:

   cp .env.example .env

3. Add your Groq API key to .env.

4. Start the app:

   npm run dev

5. Open http://localhost:5173.

Environment variables

• GROQ_API_KEY: required
• GROQ_MODEL: optional, defaults to openai/gpt-oss-20b

Deployment

This project is structured for Vercel with the API entrypoint at api/formulate.js. Add the same environment variables in Vercel before deploying.

Notes

Generated formulations are intended for expert screening only. Bench validation, SDS review, supplier confirmation, and jurisdiction-specific compliance review are still required before use.