Lantern

For when the docs run out.

Lantern is a self-hosted course platform. Instructors author video courses with modules, lessons and quizzes; students buy them at purchasing-power-adjusted prices and work through them; instructors and admins get analytics on sales, reach, completion and sentiment.

It is a server-rendered React Router 7 application backed by SQLite, with all business logic in a tested service layer.

• Features
• Tech stack
• Getting started
• Scripts
• Project structure
• Data model
• Architecture notes
• Testing
• Database migrations
• Limitations

Learning

• Courses organised into modules and lessons, with Markdown content, YouTube video, an optional linked GitHub repo and a per-lesson quiz.
• Progress tracking from video watch events through to lesson completion; completing the final lesson completes the course.
• Quizzes with multiple-choice and true/false questions, scored against a per-quiz passing threshold, with attempt history.
• Two-level threaded comments on every lesson, soft-deleted so moderation does not orphan replies.
• Star ratings, one per student per course.

Authoring

• Course creation with drag-and-drop ordering of modules, lessons and quiz questions.
• Lesson editing in an embedded Monaco editor with live Markdown preview and Shiki-highlighted code blocks.
• Draft / published / archived course states.
• Per-course student roster with progress.

Commerce

• Purchasing power parity pricing: four country tiers (0%, 30%, 50%, 70% off), configurable per course.
• PPP abuse protection — a discounted purchase is bound to the country it was made from, and access is blocked when it is opened from a different one.
• Team purchases: buying in bulk issues redeemable coupon codes, redeemed at /redeem/:code, which enroll the redeemer.

Analytics

Per course, per instructor, and platform-wide:

• Node.js 22 or newer
• pnpm 9 (corepack enable will provide it)

git clone https://github.com/BiLaL-159/Lantern.git
cd Lantern
pnpm install
pnpm db:seed    # runs migrations, then seeds demo data
pnpm dev

The app runs at http://localhost:5173.

Seeded accounts cover all three roles. Log in with an email address alone — there are no passwords (see Limitations):

In development, a floating panel in the corner switches between seeded users and overrides the detected country, which is the quickest way to see role-specific views and PPP pricing side by side.

app/
├── routes/         Route modules — loaders read, actions write
├── services/       Database access and business logic, one module per domain concept
├── db/             Drizzle schema and client
├── lib/            Pure logic: PPP pricing, sessions, trend windows, authorisation
├── components/     Shared UI, including chart and analytics primitives
│   └── ui/         shadcn/ui primitives
└── app.css         Tailwind entry point and theme tokens
drizzle/            Generated SQL migrations
scripts/seed.ts     Demo data seeder

Nineteen tables, defined in app/db/schema.ts:

• Identity — users, teams, team_members
• Catalogue — courses, categories, modules, lessons
• Learning — enrollments, lesson_progress, video_watch_events
• Assessment — quizzes, quiz_questions, quiz_options, quiz_attempts, quiz_answers
• Commerce — purchases, coupons
• Feedback — course_ratings, lesson_comments

• Routes never query the database. A route module loads through a service and renders; the service owns the SQL. This keeps business logic testable without a browser.
• Analytics are computed live. Funnels, trends and rollups are aggregate SQL queries against SQLite — nothing is precomputed or cached.
• Authorisation is centralised. requireCourseAccess (app/lib/courseAccess.ts) performs the signed-in → role → course-exists → ownership checks, in order and with correct status codes, for every instructor route.
• The client bundle is guarded by a test. Importing a runtime value from a service pulls better-sqlite3, a native Node module, into the browser bundle and breaks the route. app/components/client-safety.test.ts fails if that regression returns; shared constants live in app/lib/trends.ts instead.

pnpm test

376 tests across 17 files, covering the service layer and pure logic. Each test gets a fresh in-memory SQLite database built from the same migrations as the live one (app/test/setup.ts), so the schema under test can never drift from the schema that ships, and the suite runs in a few seconds without touching data.db.

The schema in app/db/schema.ts is the source of truth. After changing it:

pnpm db:generate    # writes a new SQL file to drizzle/
pnpm db:migrate     # applies it

Migrations are checked in and applied in order. They may carry data as well as schema — 0005_backfill_course_completion.sql retroactively completes enrollments that already qualified when course completion was introduced.

This is a demonstration application, not a production deployment:

• Authentication is email-only. Sessions and role-based authorisation are real, but there are no passwords, hashing or email verification.
• Checkout is simulated. Purchases, discounts, team seats and coupon redemption work end to end as records; no payment provider is integrated.
• SQLite is a local file, suited to single-node use.

No license is currently granted for reuse.