Add comprehensive project documentation for SmartSpend expense tracker

[Copilot]

This PR addresses the question "what is this" by providing a complete overview and documentation of the SmartSpend project.

What is SmartSpend?

SmartSpend is a Smart Expense Tracker application that leverages OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and Machine Learning to automate financial management. The system allows users to upload receipts which are automatically scanned and categorized using AI, eliminating manual data entry and reducing errors.

Key Features

• 📷 OCR Receipt Scanning - Extract text from uploaded bills/receipts using Tesseract OCR
• 🤖 ML-Powered Categorization - Automatically classifies expenses into categories (Food, Travel, Utilities, Shopping, etc.) using a trained scikit-learn model
• 📊 Interactive Dashboard - Visualize spending patterns with charts and graphs built in React
• 🔐 User Authentication - Secure login/signup system with JWT tokens
• 📂 Report Generation - Export expense data in PDF/CSV formats for analysis
• ⚡ Time-Saving Automation - Reduces manual entry and human errors in expense tracking

Technology Stack

Frontend

• React.js with Vite for fast development and modern tooling
• Tailwind CSS for responsive styling
• Lucide React for consistent iconography
• Framer Motion for smooth animations

Backend (Planned)

• Flask REST API for server-side logic
• Flask-JWT-Extended for secure authentication
• SQLAlchemy/MongoEngine for database operations

Machine Learning & OCR

• Python with scikit-learn, pandas, numpy for data processing
• Tesseract OCR for text extraction from receipt images
• Pre-trained model (expense_model.pkl) for expense categorization

Database (Planned)

• PostgreSQL/MySQL for production data storage

Current Implementation Status

✅ Completed:

• React frontend with component architecture (Dashboard, Reports, Settings, Upload)
• Trained ML model for expense categorization with 373KB model file
• Training dataset (exp.csv) with expense data for model development
• Jupyter notebook documenting the ML model development process

⏳ In Progress/Planned:

• Flask backend API implementation
• OCR service integration for receipt processing
• Database schema and models
• Authentication system
• PDF/CSV export functionality

Repository Structure

SmartSpend/
├── frontend/          # React application
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── components/    # UI components (Dashboard, Reports, etc.)
│   │   └── App.jsx       # Main application component
│   └── package.json      # Frontend dependencies
├── Expense_model/     # ML model and training
│   ├── expense_model.pkl           # Trained classification model
│   ├── exp.csv                     # Training dataset
│   └── Expense_Categorization_Model.ipynb  # Development notebook
└── requirements.txt   # Python ML dependencies

This project represents a modern approach to expense management, combining computer vision, machine learning, and responsive web technologies to create an intelligent financial tracking solution.

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