Build Your School's Software with AI

Preface

1. What you will build
2. What you will use
3. How this book works
4. A note on honesty
5. What you need to start
6. Who wrote this
7. How to get the most out of this book
8. If you only have three hours
9. How to begin

Chapter 1: Why Schools Need Their Own Software

1. What you will learn
2. Why it matters
3. Where most school software loses to the spreadsheet
4. What the AI coding agent changes
5. What this looks like in practice
6. A month in the life of the spreadsheet
7. What “owning your own tool” actually means
8. When to buy instead
9. The honest case for building
10. Where this book goes from here
11. Checklist
12. A first reality check before you start
13. The honest cost of building
14. Stop, look, decide: the five-minute refusal
15. Summary
16. Try it yourself

Chapter 2: Setting Up Your AI Coding Workflow

1. What you will learn
2. Why it matters
3. Step 1: Install Node.js
4. Step 2: Install Git
5. Step 3: Install OpenCode
6. Step 4: Create your project folder
7. Step 5: Write your rules file
8. Step 6: Checkpoint your empty project
9. Step 7: Understand how to talk to the agent
10. Step 8: Understand OpenCode modes
11. Step 9: Your first conversation
12. If a step does not go smoothly
13. What a good result looks like
14. A demo conversation, start to finish
15. Three rules that save you all week
16. Your workbench, in one glance
17. Common mistakes and how to fix them
18. Chapter checklist
19. Summary
20. Try it yourself

Chapter 3: Writing a Product Spec Before You Prompt

1. What you will learn
2. Why it matters
3. The five parts of a small spec
4. Step 1: Write the problem in one paragraph
5. Step 2: Name the roles
6. Step 3: Write user stories
7. Step 4: Sketch the data
8. Step 5: Write acceptance criteria
9. From spec to prompts
10. Keep your data sketch honest
11. From spec to build order: read the dependencies
12. What a good result looks like
13. Common mistakes and how to fix them
14. Chapter checklist
15. Summary
16. Try it yourself

Chapter 4: Project 1 – School LMS

1. What you will build
2. Why it matters
3. Step 1: Create the project with Next.js
4. Step 2: Create the database layer
5. Step 3: Add passwords and sessions
6. Step 4: Seed the app with demo accounts
7. Step 5: Login page and role guards
8. Step 6: Admin page to manage users
9. Step 7: Classes and enrollments
10. Step 8: Assignments and grades
11. Step 9: The student report card
12. What the AI produced and how to check it
13. Common mistakes and how to fix them
14. Chapter checklist
15. Summary
16. Try it yourself

Chapter 5: Project 2 – Inventory and Asset Tracking

1. What you will build
2. Why it matters
3. Step 0: Learn the log, then build
4. Step 1: Create the project and copy your habits
5. Step 2: Think about the schema before scaffolding
6. Step 3: Seed a believable little world
7. Step 4: List inventory and add an item
8. Step 5: The move, with a transaction
9. Step 6: Condition, maintenance, and write-off
10. Step 7: A page the office actually likes
11. The two queries your audit will ask
12. A label and an audit question
13. What the AI produced and how to check it
14. Common mistakes and how to fix them
15. Chapter checklist
16. Summary
17. Try it yourself

Chapter 6: Project 3 – Payments and Admin Documents

1. What you will build
2. Why it matters
3. Step 0: Money is a ledger, not a box
4. Step 1: Create the third project
5. Step 2: Seed believable data
6. Step 3: The fee dashboard
7. Step 4: Record a payment
8. Step 5: Teacher documents, the careful way
9. Step 6: Wiring it together
10. Step 7: The reconciliation check (bank, paper, app)
11. Step 8: The proof the office asks for
12. What the AI produced and how to check it
13. Common mistakes and how to fix them
14. Chapter checklist
15. Summary
16. Try it yourself

Chapter 7: Database Design for Non-Programmers

1. What you will learn
2. Why it matters
3. The five words that explain every database
4. Relations: one, many, and many-to-many
5. Read a generated schema like a reviewer
6. Indexes: speed you earn, not speed you buy
7. Transactions: the atomic promise
8. Migrations: changing the schema without the churn
9. Backups: the one quest that never ends
10. NULL is a fact, empty string is a lie
11. Stored totals rot; queries do not
12. What a good result looks like
13. Common mistakes and how to fix them
14. Chapter checklist
15. Summary
16. Try it yourself

Chapter 8: Testing and Fixing What the AI Gets Wrong

1. What you will learn
2. Why it matters
3. Layer 1: Manual test plans, from your own words
4. Layer 2: Small automated tests with node:test
5. The debugging conversation: a script you can rely on
6. A worked debugging session, from first alarm to green
7. Which check belongs where: the two-layer map
8. Who runs the tests: you, not the agent
9. The three questions before you click anything
10. Read the diff before you trust the fix
11. Git as your time machine
12. When to escalate: the diff review
13. Common mistakes and how to fix them
14. Chapter checklist
15. Summary
16. Try it yourself

Chapter 9: Security and Student Data Privacy Basics

1. What you will learn
2. Why it matters
3. Account protection: passwords and sessions
4. Validation: never trust the form
5. Roles: least privilege, enforced twice
6. Files: the gatehouse rules
7. Secrets: the five places they leak
8. Student data privacy: the part the law owns
9. The security round, in one prompt
10. Three threats that actually visit small schools
11. The admin account is the castle gate
12. Common mistakes and how to fix them
13. Chapter checklist
14. Summary
15. Try it yourself

Chapter 10: Deploying on a Budget VPS

1. What you will learn
2. Why it matters
3. Step 1: Rent a small server and choose a name
4. Step 2: Harden the server in five moves
5. Step 3: Install Node, the repo, and the app
6. Step 4: Keep it alive with PM2
7. Step 5: Put Nginx and HTTPS in front
8. Step 6: Backups that outlive the server
9. Step 7: Watch the app so the office never has to
10. The disaster drill: deploy and roll back on purpose
11. Step 8: The whole school, one server
12. What a good result looks like
13. Common mistakes and how to fix them
14. Chapter checklist
15. Summary
16. Try it yourself

Chapter 11: Maintaining and Extending Your App

1. What you will learn
2. Why it matters
3. Step 1: The monthly routine
4. Step 2: How a feature gets born
5. Step 3: Editing with the smallest possible change
6. Step 4: Documenting so the next teacher can drive
7. Step 5: The handover, done while nothing is on fire
8. The upgrade path, without the panic
9. The account map: where the keys live
10. Some features you should kill
11. What a good result looks like
12. Common mistakes and how to fix them
13. Chapter checklist
14. Summary
15. Try it yourself

About the Author

Appendix A: Prompt Templates

1. 1. Spec prompt (plan first, before any code)
2. 2. Feature prompt (one small, runnable step)
3. 3. Bug-fix prompt (full evidence, small territory)
4. 4. Refactor prompt (same behaviour, cleaner code)
5. 5. Security and data review prompt (termly)
6. How to adapt these

Appendix B: Checklists

1. Pre-launch checklist
2. Security checklist
3. Backup checklist
4. Monthly routine (one line each)

Appendix C: Troubleshooting

1. The app will not start
2. Login does not work
3. The agent’s feature did not change anything
4. Grades yield odd numbers
5. A table gives a 500 error or empty rows
6. Payments show the wrong owed amount
7. The document will not download
8. The server is slow
9. Everything looks fine and it is still wrong
10. The universal debug loop

Glossary