Intro
TreeHub is a clickable prototype: plant an idea, grow it as a tree, watch vines between related work. The README calls it polished, not production-ready. GitHub still uses the first-edition name Idea-graden.
The UI problem is making a knowledge graph feel like a garden instead of a whiteboard — stages from seed through fruit, a genome fingerprint, bounties, a forest view.
Method
Next.js 16, React Flow, Framer Motion, Zustand persisted as treehub-forest and treehub-auth. Planting a seed writes a real tree into that store. Genome fields are typed (purpose, domain, problems, technologies, maturity 0–100). Relatedness is a hardcoded edge list, not embeddings. Search expands a synonym table, then substring-scores titles.
The AI Gardener typewrites canned markdown for sixteen action types. Auth buttons set a mock user. That is the product honesty: the graph interactions are real; the intelligence is staged.
Demo
npm run dev. Guest through /auth. Open the AI Tutor for Children tree, the DNA viewer against the dyslexia-speech neighbour, the forest vines, Explore with robot doctor, Health Check typewriter, then plant a seed and refresh — it is still there.
Conclusion
A local-first UX of a collaborative idea graph. Do not claim semantic search or a live gardener. Do claim a complete clickable forest that survives reload.