Live Workshop Codelab

Session-based workshop app for in-person events: students follow Markdown steps, tutors drive pace and watch progress. Designed to run on Render as one Web Service plus managed Postgres.

Deploy on Render

Repo: github.com/ojusave/render-codelab

Blueprint (Web + Postgres):

Create Blueprint from repo

1. Click the link → connect GitHub → branch main.
2. Set TUTOR_PASSWORD when prompted (only manual secret).
3. Click Apply. Render creates:
   • Postgres workshop-codelab-db
   • Web workshop-codelab
4. Build runs on Render (npm install --include=dev && npm run build).
5. Pre-deploy runs compiled migrations + seed (node dist/server/cli/*.js).
6. Start runs node dist/server/index.js on PORT (set by Render).

After deploy, open your *.onrender.com URL:

Role	Path
Landing	/
Student	/s/cascadia-2026
Tutor	/tutor/cascadia-2026

Health check: GET /healthz → ok

Environment variables (Render)

Variable	Set by
DATABASE_URL	Blueprint → Postgres workshop-codelab-db
PORT	Render (required in production)
RENDER_EXTERNAL_URL	Render (public URL; logged at startup)
SESSION_SIGNING_SECRET	Blueprint generateValue: true
TUTOR_PASSWORD	You, at Blueprint apply
VITE_GITHUB_REPO_URL	Blueprint (build-time, Deploy/GitHub links)
VITE_DEFAULT_SESSION_CODE	Blueprint (cascadia-2026)
SEED_SESSION_CODE	Blueprint (cascadia-2026)

Redeploy after editing Markdown under content/ (loaded at server startup in production).

Features

• Students (/s/:sessionCode): name + progress in browser storage; step nav, Markdown, Done / Stuck, live tutor pointer.
• Tutor (/tutor/:sessionCode): password gate; roster, pointer controls.
• Content: content/NN-*.md with frontmatter order, title, optional duration.

Workshop content

12 steps (~45 min in-room): workshop-demo → ticker-research-workflows with Render Workflows. See docs/content-schema.md for the author contract.

Add or change steps

1. Add content/NN-your-step.md with frontmatter (order, title).
2. Commit and push → Render redeploys the web service.

Run locally (optional)

Local dev mirrors production but uses Vite for hot reload. Requires Postgres and a .env file.

cp .env.example .env
# Set DATABASE_URL, TUTOR_PASSWORD, SESSION_SIGNING_SECRET

npm install
npm run build
npm run db:migrate
npm run db:seed
npm run dev

• UI: http://localhost:5173 (proxies /api and /ws to the API)
• API-only (production-like): npm run build && PORT=8787 npm start → http://localhost:8787

Stack

• Runtime on Render: Node 22, Express, compiled server + static client in dist/
• Database: Render Postgres, Drizzle ORM
• Client build: Vite (build time only on Render, not a dev server in production)
• Realtime: WebSocket /ws on the same service

License

MIT.