NWD Central Hub: Getting Involved

NWD Central Hub Prototype | Home

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Who Can Contribute?

The NWD Central Hub Prototype is built by students participating in the Next Wave Dev (NWD) practicum program. During the MVP phase, practicum students serve as user testers and contributors — validating that the platform works as intended and building out features alongside the senior development team.

Contributors work in the contractor role on the platform itself, but their real-world function during the practicum is as engineers and QA testers, not as permanent platform users.

You do not need to be a professional developer. If you are an NWD practicum student with foundational skills in web development, you are eligible to get involved.

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How to Request Access

1. Confirm eligibility — You must be an active NWD practicum student to contribute.
2. Contact a project administrator — Reach out via Slack DM with your GitHub username and the email address you used (or plan to use) to sign up for Supabase. See Project Administrators below.
3. Accept the GitHub invitation — An admin will invite you to the nwd-central-hub-prototype repository. Note: the repository is private.
4. Accept the Supabase invitation — An admin will invite your Supabase email to the shared NWD Central Hub project. Accept the email invitation from Supabase.
5. Clone the repository and install dependencies — Once access is granted, clone the repo and run npm install.
6. Set up your environment file — Copy .env.example to .env.local and fill in the Supabase credentials from your Supabase dashboard. An admin can also provide these values directly.
7. Request test account credentials — Ask an admin for one test account per role (admin, client, contractor) so you can verify your setup.
8. Pick an issue — Browse open issues, self-assign one, and leave a comment letting the team know you have started.

Never commit .env.local to version control. It contains credentials and is already listed in .gitignore.

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What to Read Before Writing Any Code

Read these documents in order before making your first contribution:

1. README.md — Project overview, tech stack, local setup steps, available scripts, and common troubleshooting. Start here.
2. docs/onboarding.md — Step-by-step guide for getting the repo running locally, connecting to Supabase, and verifying each role logs in correctly.
3. docs/mvp.md — Defines what the platform is, who the three roles are, the 8-step MVP acceptance test, and what is explicitly out of scope.
4. docs/architecture.md — Covers the auth flow, role-based routing, and the proposal-to-project lifecycle.
5. docs/database-schema.md — Documents the deployed Supabase tables, Row-Level Security policies, and table relationships.

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Skills That Are Useful

Skill	Required or Helpful
JavaScript / TypeScript	Required
React fundamentals	Required
Next.js (App Router)	Required
Git & GitHub (branching, pull requests)	Required
Node.js v20+	Required
Tailwind CSS v4	Helpful
Supabase (auth, database, RLS)	Helpful
SQL basics	Helpful
REST API concepts	Helpful

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FAQ

Q: Do I need to create my own Supabase project? A: No. The team uses a shared Supabase instance. Contact an admin with your Supabase account email and they will invite you to the project. Do not create your own — credentials must come from the shared project.

Q: What test accounts do I need before I start developing? A: You need one test account per role: admin, client, and contractor. Request these from a project administrator. Verify that each account logs in and is routed to the correct dashboard before starting any feature work.

Q: Where do I find an issue to work on? A: Browse the open issues on the nwd-central-hub-prototype repository. Self-assign the issue on GitHub, create a branch following the naming convention in DEVELOPER.md, and leave a comment on the issue so the team knows you have started.

Q: What is the MVP acceptance test? A: The MVP is considered complete when an 8-step scenario runs end-to-end without manual intervention: admin invites a client → client submits a proposal → admin approves it → contractor requests access → admin approves the contractor → all three roles can access the project workspace and post messages. See docs/mvp.md for the full scenario.

Q: My login works but I'm being routed to /unauthorized. What's wrong? A: The profiles table in Supabase may be missing a row for your user, or the role column may be set incorrectly. Check the profiles table in the Supabase dashboard and confirm the role value matches the account type you are testing.

Q: Can I propose a new feature that isn't in the backlog? A: Yes, but evaluate it against the MVP scope in docs/mvp.md first. Work that doesn't serve the 8-step MVP acceptance test is post-MVP by default. Open an issue to discuss it with an admin before starting.

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Project Administrators

For repository access, Supabase invitations, test account credentials, or other setup help:

Name	Contact Method
Taylor	Slack DM
Brad	Slack DM
Jesse	Slack DM — GitHub: @JesseCaddell

Reach out via Slack DM with your GitHub username and your Supabase email address.

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This page is part of the NWD Central Hub wiki. Return to NWD Central Hub Prototype or Home.