rootnode-academy/platform

RootNode Academy — Platform

The full multi-student platform, layered on top of the Lab image at the repo root (backend/ entrypoint/Dockerfile unmodified; frontend bundle gained Phase 3B learning UX, see docs/PHASE3B_LEARNING_AND_ASSESSMENT.md §10–11). Start here, then go to the component you need:

• provisioner/ — Postgres-backed environment registry and lifecycle. Design: docs/LAB_ARCHITECTURE.md, docs/PHASE1_PLATFORM_FOUNDATION.md. Operational reference: provisioner/README.md.
• api/ — the lightweight Platform API: students, cohorts and cohort membership, curriculum, detailed scenario attempt telemetry, progressive hints, curriculum completion rules, the exam + capstone assessment engine, achievements, per-instructor accounts, persistent student/ instructor sessions, RBAC, audit logging, real student credentials + remote classrooms (Phase 5A), self-paced programs/enrollment + the website integration boundary (Phase 5B), and a provider-neutral enrollment-communications pipeline (activation/enrollment-confirmation/ password-reset email, Phase 5C), the ROOT_ course/module/activity content model layered over curriculum/assessments (Phase 6A) with real teaching content across most of the Kubernetes courses and a server-side capstone unlock enforcement fix (Phase 6B), and the instructor/admin control plane. No k3s, no --privileged — this replaced Phase 2A's "identity" instance, which was a full Lab image booting an unused k3s cluster just to serve these APIs. Design: docs/PHASE2B_ADMIN_AND_PLATFORM_DATA.md (split + Postgres migration), docs/PHASE3A_IDENTITY_AND_INSTRUCTOR_ACCESS.md (sessions, accounts, RBAC, audit), docs/PHASE3B_LEARNING_AND_ASSESSMENT.md (learning/assessment engine), docs/PHASE5A_STUDENT_IDENTITY_REMOTE_CLASSROOM.md (student credentials, remote classroom), docs/PHASE5B_SELF_PACED_ENROLLMENT.md (programs, enrollment, website integration boundary), docs/PHASE5C_ENROLLMENT_COMMUNICATIONS.md (notifications, email delivery), docs/PHASE6A_ROOT_COURSE_FOUNDATION.md (course/module/activity content model, gold-standard module), docs/PHASE6B_ROOT_CURRICULUM_EXPANSION.md (curriculum authoring across ROOT 05-10/12/Capstone, the capstone unlock fix). Operational reference: api/README.md.
• gateway/ — the only student-facing path to a Lab (HTTP + WebSocket proxy, environment-aware routing derived from a server-controlled session — not a client-suppliable header/param — and, as of Phase 3B, server-side gating of progressive hint reveal). Design: docs/PHASE2A_GATEWAY_AND_STUDENT_FLOW.md (routing), docs/PHASE3A_IDENTITY_AND_INSTRUCTOR_ACCESS.md (persistent sessions, CSRF), docs/PHASE3B_LEARNING_AND_ASSESSMENT.md §3 (hint gating).
• egress-proxy/ — shared allowlisting proxy every Lab's outbound traffic passes through.
• lab-router/ — Phase 4.1 addition. Runs on the Lab Host VM (or dev-local's stand-in in local dev, though direct mode there never exercises it); resolves an opaque routing token to a local Lab container purely from Docker state, over mTLS, so the Gateway never needs a Docker-internal address. Design: docs/PHASE4_1_PREPRODUCTION_HARDENING.md §1-3.
• docker-compose.dev.yml — the full stack (Postgres, egress proxy, Provisioner, Platform API, Gateway) on one machine. This is the Phase 1/2A/2B local dev exception — production is the two-VM Proxmox split described in docs/LAB_ARCHITECTURE.md §1.

Running the full stack locally

cd platform
echo "PROVISIONER_SHARED_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)" > .env
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml build
docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d

# First run only — create the owner account (no ADMIN_PASSWORD anymore, see
# docs/PHASE3A_IDENTITY_AND_INSTRUCTOR_ACCESS.md):
cd api
PLATFORM_DB_URL=postgres://postgres:postgres@localhost:5433/rootnode_platform \
  node bootstrap-owner.js [email protected] "Your Name" "a-real-password-12-chars-plus"

No k3s boot to wait for at this layer anymore (Platform API starts instantly) — the whole platform is reachable at http://localhost:4200 (the Gateway) right away: students at /, instructors at /admin (sign in with the owner account you just bootstrapped, then create further instructor accounts from the Instructors tab).

Tests

• provisioner/test/run.js — fast, isolated Provisioner tests (network/container/firewall mechanics, no Gateway/Platform API involved). Run against provisioner/docker-compose.dev.yml.
• test/e2e-phase2a.js — student-flow regression through real session cookies: roster → login → curriculum → launch → Gateway routing → cross-student rejection → progress relay → reset.
• test/e2e-phase2b.js — the classroom acceptance workflow: instructor creates a cohort, adds students, assigns curriculum, Prepare Labs (concurrent), students complete different scenarios, instructor resets one, instructor destroys all cohort Labs after class — progress survives every step.
• test/e2e-phase3a.js — persistent sessions (including a real Platform API restart), instructor auth (no enumeration, rate limiting), RBAC across owner/admin/instructor, cohort-scoped instructor access, CSRF enforcement, password change, and audit logging.
• test/e2e-phase3b.js — attempt telemetry, progressive hint sequencing/persistence through a Lab reset, curriculum stage/Capstone lock-unlock, the exam engine (random draw, server timer, expiry, restart persistence), the Capstone workflow end to end, two-student assessment isolation, and instructor learning analytics/RBAC.
• test/e2e-phase5a.js — real student credentials (activation/password reset/login), remote classroom sessions (join/heartbeat/announcements/help requests), and instructor conversion of a pilot student to a credentialed account.
• test/e2e-phase5b.js — programs/enrollment, entitlement gating (pending/future/expired/ cancelled), server-derived completion, disposable-Lab persistence across destroy/recreate, and the website/commerce integration boundary (idempotency, concurrency, RBAC).
• test/e2e-phase5c.js — the notification lifecycle (queue/retry/failure/exhaustion), activation/enrollment-confirmation/password-reset email delivery via the deterministic dev provider, minor/no-email contact-email resolution, and admin notification RBAC.
• test/e2e-phase6a.js — course/module/activity hierarchy and ordering, prerequisite-based locking, all three completion behaviors (manual marker/scenario/assessment-derived), resume, cross-student isolation, RBAC for self-paced (no-cohort) students, and draft-content hiding.
• test/e2e-phase6b.js — hierarchy for the 13 new modules across ROOT 05-10/12/Capstone, prerequisite chains through the newly-inserted front-door modules, the optional-vs-required (is_required) completion rule, and the capstone server-side unlock fix in both directions (a direct bypass attempt rejected, a legitimately unlocked attempt still accepted).

All e2e suites need OWNER_EMAIL / OWNER_PASSWORD set to a real bootstrapped instructor account (see "Running the full stack locally" above) — the old ADMIN_PASSWORD mechanism is gone. They're slow (real k3s boots, e2e-phase3b.js also runs a real API restart) and need the full stack up. Run each suite against its own freshly-reset stack, not chained one after another against the same Postgres — several routes (the admin dashboard's running-lab count, a course's percent-complete) read GLOBAL state on purpose, and chaining suites produces false failures from shared state, not real regressions (found and documented during Phase 6A's own regression pass). None of them substitute for the manual real-Lab-image checks (node-pty, terminal WebSocket, kubectl, scenario validation) in docs/PHASE2A_GATEWAY_AND_STUDENT_FLOW.md §8 — those need a browser-equivalent client and aren't automated here. Two exceptions get a real-Lab dress rehearsal instead: Phase 6A's gold-standard module (infra/scripts/drills/run-phase6a-course-rehearsal.sh) and Phase 6B's curriculum expansion, including a real kubectl expose and a real instructor/classroom narrative (infra/scripts/drills/run-phase6b-root-course-rehearsal.sh).

Known limitations

See provisioner/README.md (Phase 1), docs/PHASE2A_GATEWAY_AND_STUDENT_FLOW.md §9 (Phase 2A), docs/PHASE3A_IDENTITY_AND_INSTRUCTOR_ACCESS.md (Phase 3A identity limitations), and docs/PHASE3B_LEARNING_AND_ASSESSMENT.md §20 (Phase 3B learning/assessment limitations) for the full, honest lists. Phase 3B's "no automatic abandoned-attempt detection" and "no per-cohort needs-attention threshold configuration" limitations were both closed in Phase 4.1 (§13/§17 of docs/PHASE4_1_PREPRODUCTION_HARDENING.md); its raw-JSON pool_spec limitation was replaced with a structured editor (§18) with an owner-only raw-JSON fallback still available. Phase 4.1's own known limitation: real remote/self-paced delivery needs student email/password authentication, not built — see docs/REMOTE_AND_SELF_PACED_ARCHITECTURE.md.

Running this in production

../infra/ has the full production infrastructure package (Ansible, Terraform, firewall, monitoring, backup, CI/CD) for deploying the Platform API/Gateway/Provisioner/Postgres onto a dedicated rn-platform-01 VM, with student Labs — and a new lab-router service (../platform/lab-router/) — on a separate rn-lab-host-01 VM. See ../docs/PHASE4_PRODUCTION_INFRASTRUCTURE.md for the overview and ../docs/PHASE4_1_PREPRODUCTION_HARDENING.md for how Gateway-to-Lab reachability across two real VMs was closed (a Lab Host Router + mTLS data plane, simulation-tested in ../infra/scripts/simulate-two-host/) and for the rest of Phase 4.1's pre-production hardening.