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Production Platform

The Notwork

Co-architect · led the build team · sole maintainer since Oct 2025

The Notwork is the full-stack platform behind North Carolina's first state-backed esports and STEM league. Students learn through mastery pathways, play games, earn micro-credentials, and compete on rosters and leaderboards. The same platform runs the league: teachers verify students, staff manage content and seasons, and admins push updates all year. I co-architected it, led the team that built it and its 2025 rebuild, and have run it on my own since October 2025.

Screenshot of The Notwork
Users
~24K
Page views
~490K
Peak DAU
~1K
Tracked events
~1.5M
View live site
Stack

What it's built with

TypeScriptReactNext.jsPostgreSQLDrizzle ORMBunRedisClerkVercelCloudflareSentryAI SDK
Context

The problem

The league needed one platform that could both teach students and run the season: learning content, games, and competition for students, plus verification, rosters, communication, and content tools for teachers and staff.

Approach

What I built

A full-stack Next.js platform with role-based experiences for students, teachers, and staff. Students engage through pathways, games, and competitions; staff get admin tooling, content management, verification, messaging, and analytics in one place.

Screens

Inside the product

Rubric scoring screen with AI analysis, per-criterion scores and reasoning, and a 670 of 1000 total
AI-assisted judging: per-criterion scores with the model's reasoning, which staff review and adjust before saving.
Content management table with title, type, difficulty, topic, and publish status columns
The content library staff manage: lessons, games, and challenges by type, difficulty, and topic.
SMS composer with a live-mode toggle, message template, and recipient filters by region, school, and completion
SMS campaigns through Twilio, targeted by region, school, interest, and what a student has completed.
System

What's inside

  • Student profiles, teams, rosters, and leaderboards
  • Mastery pathways, submissions, rubrics, and micro-credentials
  • AI-assisted rubric grading
  • Game-based learning catalog (STEM, skilled trades, and more)
  • Curriculum, content, and post management
  • Teacher verification and student communication workflows
  • Notifications, email, and SMS via integrated providers
  • Season logic: roster locking, playoff cutoffs, in-season state
  • Staff tools: a 750+ item content library, rubrics, AI-assisted judging, SMS campaigns through Twilio, workflows, scripts, a test harness, and metrics
Outcome

The impact

Replaced spreadsheets and ad-hoc tools with one production system that runs the league day to day: ~24K users, ~490K page views, and a peak of ~1K daily active users.

Highlights

What stood out

  • One of two architects who set the platform's direction. Led five developers through the initial build: hired the team, set coding standards and tooling, reviewed PRs weekly, and refined tickets with product and design.
  • Led the 2025 rebuild on a new architecture: schema redesign, end-to-end notifications, server pagination, error handling and logging, and hundreds of regression tests.
  • Designed identity verification for in-person competition: a teacher-as-verifier workflow, roster and eligibility logic, and team locking at playoff cutoffs, replacing manual spreadsheet checks.
  • AI-assisted judging: the model scores a submission against each rubric criterion with written reasoning and drafts feedback, and staff review and adjust it before saving.
  • Built mastery pathways with submissions, rubrics, AI-assisted grading, and micro-credentials, plus an Explore feed that mixes lessons, video, games, and submissions.
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