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§ masterplan.md

Campus Skill Swap

A playful marketplace where students trade skills instead of money: one hour of Python help for one hour of graphic design.

All ideas
Playful

01

App overview and objectives

A campus marketplace where the currency is time, not money: one hour of Python tutoring buys one hour of graphic design. The objective is to make peer learning liquid inside a single institution.

02

The problem worth solving

Students are simultaneously rich in one skill and poor in another, and cash makes peer help awkward. A time-credit system removes the money conversation and turns idle expertise into a circulating resource.

03

Target audience

  • Primary — Undergraduates who want help with coursework and skills outside their department.
  • Secondary — Clubs and departments that want to formalise peer mentoring.

04

Roles and permissions

  • Visitor — read-only public pages, can sign up.
  • Member — owns their own records, cannot see other users' data.

05

Core features

  • Skill listings with level, format (online/in person) and availability
  • Time-credit wallet — earn an hour by teaching, spend an hour by learning
  • Matching and booking with a shared calendar and reminders
  • Session confirmation by both sides before credits transfer
  • Reputation from reviews plus a visible reliability score
  • Leaderboard and badges for top contributors each month

Deliberately later

  • Group workshops for multiple credits
  • Department-sponsored credit grants
  • Cross-campus federation

06

Technical stack

React front end, Postgres with strict transactional rules for the credit ledger, institutional email verification for sign-up.

Why: A currency needs an auditable ledger — credits must move in database transactions, never as a mutable balance field.

Alternatives: A chat group with a spreadsheet (zero cost, collapses past 50 users) or a full marketplace with money (regulatory burden, kills the culture).

07

Conceptual data model

User — profile, department, batch, skills offered, skills wanted

Listing — user, skill, level, format, availability windows

Booking — listing, learner, slot, status, both-side confirmations

LedgerEntry — from user, to user, hours, booking, created_at

Review — booking, rating, comment, tags

08

Integrations

  • Institutional email verification
  • Calendar invitations
  • Push or email reminders

09

UI design principles

  • Rounded shapes, bright accent colours, springy micro-animations on every tap.
  • Reward progress visually — confetti, badges, character reactions.
  • Copy is short, warm and second-person; never corporate.

10

Security considerations

  • Verified campus email required, so the network stays closed and accountable.
  • Report and block flows on every profile; safety guidelines shown before the first in-person booking.
  • Ledger is append-only; balances are computed, never edited directly.

11

Development phases

Phase 1 — Prove the core

  • — Skill listings with level, format (online/in person) and availability
  • — Time-credit wallet — earn an hour by teaching, spend an hour by learning
  • — Matching and booking with a shared calendar and reminders
  • — Static content and design system in place
  • — Basic analytics

Phase 2 — Make it real

  • — Session confirmation by both sides before credits transfer
  • — Reputation from reviews plus a visible reliability score
  • — Leaderboard and badges for top contributors each month
  • — Accounts, sign-in and password reset
  • — Empty, loading and error states everywhere

Phase 3 — Polish and launch

  • — Performance, accessibility and SEO pass
  • — Legal pages, contact route and 404 handling
  • — Wire up: Institutional email verification
  • — Wire up: Calendar invitations

Phase 4 — Grow

  • — Group workshops for multiple credits
  • — Department-sponsored credit grants
  • — Cross-campus federation

12

Challenges and solutions

Risk — Credit inflation and hoarding

Solution — Credits expire after a semester and new users get a small starting grant.

Risk — No-shows

Solution — Reliability score, automatic reminders, and a penalty for repeated no-shows.

Risk — Cold start with too few listings

Solution — Launch inside one department with seeded tutors before opening campus-wide.

13

Future expansion

  • Alumni participation
  • Skill certification with faculty endorsement
  • Job-board integration

14

Page list (13 pages)

  1. 01 PUBLIC Browse Skills — Search and filter who can teach what, when.
  2. 02 APP (signed in) My Swaps — Upcoming and past sessions plus the credit wallet.
  3. 03 PUBLIC Schedule — Booking flow and calendar view.
  4. 04 PUBLIC Leaderboard — Monthly top teachers and badges.
  5. 05 PUBLIC Guidelines — Safety, conduct and how credits work.
  6. 06 AUTH Sign up — Create an account with email or a social provider.
  7. 07 AUTH Log in — Return to the account, with error and lockout states.
  8. 08 AUTH Reset password — Request a reset link and set a new password.
  9. 09 APP (signed in) Account settings — Profile, email, password, language and delete account.
  10. 10 PUBLIC Contact — Contact form plus real address, phone and email.
  11. 11 LEGAL & SYSTEM Privacy policy — What data is collected, why, and how to remove it.
  12. 12 LEGAL & SYSTEM Terms of service — Rules of use, liability and account termination.
  13. 13 LEGAL & SYSTEM 404 not found — Friendly dead end with search and links back.

15

Page map

PUBLIC            AUTH               APP (signed in)      LEGAL & SYSTEM
────────────────  ─────────────────  ───────────────────  ───────────────────
├─ Browse Skills  ├─ Sign up         ├─ My Swaps          ├─ Privacy policy
├─ Schedule       ├─ Log in          └─ Account settings  ├─ Terms of service
├─ Leaderboard    └─ Reset password                       └─ 404 not found
├─ Guidelines
└─ Contact

key flows:
  Browse Skills ──▶ Schedule
  Schedule ──▶ My Swaps
  My Swaps ──▶ Leaderboard
  Guidelines ──▶ Browse Skills