# Remote & Self-Paced Delivery Architecture Phase 4.1 §12. This is an architecture review, not a new product — no self-registration, payments, or public enrollment is built here (explicit non-goal). The question this document answers: does the infrastructure and application assume "an instructor always provisions the Lab," and if so, where, and what would need to change for self-paced delivery to work. ## The short answer: less of that assumption exists than expected RootNode Academy's Lab lifecycle was built student-driven from Phase 1 — `POST /api/environment/launch` is called by the STUDENT'S OWN session, not by an instructor action. "Prepare Labs" (`POST /api/admin/cohorts/:id/prepare-labs`) is a classroom **convenience** that front-loads several students' launches at once before a synchronous class session, not the only path to a running Lab. This was true before Phase 4.1 and confirmed still true by this phase's own regression suites (`platform/test/e2e-phase2a.js` roster's two students with `cohort_id: null` and takes them through login → curriculum → launch → scenario work with zero cohort involvement) and by two new Phase 4.1 drills built specifically to exercise the remote/returning -student narrative: - `infra/scripts/drills/test-lab-host-loss.js` — student launches, makes progress, their Lab is destroyed out from under them (standing in for an idle-reaper destroy), Platform stays up, progress is untouched, they launch again unprompted and continue. - `infra/scripts/drills/test-fake-cohort-rehearsal.js` — the same "returns later, fresh Lab, curriculum continues" narrative as part of a fuller classroom rehearsal. Both pass today, with zero application code changes needed for the self-paced-relevant parts of this flow specifically — see the Phase 4.1 report for the full run results. ## What already works, unmodified - **Student-initiated provisioning** — no instructor step is required between "student wants to work" and "Lab exists." (`platform/api/src/server.js`'s `/api/environment/launch`.) - **Cohort-less students** — `cohort_id` is nullable on student creation (`POST /api/admin/students`); a student with no cohort logs in, sees the curriculum, launches Labs, and makes progress identically to a cohorted one. Confirmed by inspection AND by the existing regression suite, not just by schema reading. - **Idle reaper → academic state survives → return → continue** — the exact lifecycle this section describes as the target self-paced experience is what Phase 1's reaper + Phase 2B's Postgres-backed academic data (separate from the disposable Lab) were already designed to produce. Phase 4.1 proved it end-to-end, twice (see above). - **Curriculum content itself is not cohort-gated** — `GET /api/curriculum/path` reads the one curriculum path file directly (`curriculum.loadCurriculumPath()`); it never checks `curriculum_assignments` or cohort membership at all. A self-paced student sees the full curriculum with no instructor action required to "unlock" it. ## What's genuinely missing for a real self-paced product (Phase 5, not built here) 1. **No self-registration / public enrollment surface.** Still true, still deliberate — Phase 5B built the boundary a *separate* public website will call (`POST /api/integrations/enrollments`, see `docs/PHASE5B_SELF_PACED_ENROLLMENT.md` §11 and `docs/WEBSITE_ENROLLMENT_INTEGRATION.md`) rather than a public sign-up form here. A student row can now be created automatically by a trusted server-to-server enrollment event, but there is still no browser-facing "sign up" page anywhere in this codebase — that's the website's job. 2. ~~**No real student authentication.**~~ **Closed in Phase 5A.** Students now have real credentials (email+password or login-identifier+password, `password_hash`/`scrypt` reusing `instructors`' exact `src/auth/password.js`), a first-login/reset token flow, and Postgres- backed rate-limited/CSRF-protected sessions on the same `sessions` table instructors use — see `docs/PHASE5A_STUDENT_IDENTITY_REMOTE_CLASSROOM.md`. The old bare-`student_id` `POST /api/login` still works for not-yet-converted pilot rows only; it's rejected (409) the moment an account has real credentials or a pending activation token. 3. ~~**`curriculum_assignments.student_id` is schema-ready but unwired.**~~ **Addressed differently in Phase 5B.** `curriculum_assignments` itself remains unwired, unchanged — but the real problem it was meant to eventually solve (which curriculum a given student sees) is now solved at the enrollment layer instead: `enrollments.curriculum_path` snapshots `programs.curriculum_path` per enrollment. `curriculum_assignments` is still available for a future direct per-student assignment need outside the program/enrollment model — it wasn't removed, just not the mechanism Phase 5B ended up using. See `docs/PHASE5B_SELF_PACED_ENROLLMENT.md` §4. 4. ~~**No delivery-mode concept anywhere.**~~ **Closed in Phase 5B.** `programs.delivery_mode`/`enrollments.delivery_mode` (`self_paced`/`cohort`/`hybrid`) is now a real, snapshotted field. Capacity planning, the reaper, and Lab lifecycle mechanics still behave identically regardless of delivery mode — this only affects how enrollment/entitlement is modeled, not infrastructure. 5. **No self-paced enrollment/entitlement model.** ~~Closed in Phase 5B~~ — see `docs/PHASE5B_SELF_PACED_ENROLLMENT.md` for `programs`/`enrollments`, server-enforced entitlement (pending/future/expired/cancelled), server-derived completion, and the resulting self-paced student dashboard. ## What Phase 4.1 deliberately did NOT do here No signup flow, no student password/email auth implementation, no per-student curriculum assignment route, no payments, no public course catalog, no held/premium scenario content. All explicit non-goals per this phase's authorization. Student authentication (Phase 5A) and the self-paced enrollment/entitlement model (Phase 5B) have both since been built; a public self-registration *page*, real payment processing, and a Parent/Guardian portal remain deliberately out of scope — see `docs/PHASE5B_SELF_PACED_ENROLLMENT.md` §12.