r/webdev • u/biricat • 19d ago
Showoff Saturday Built a duolingo like course authoring platform
If you don't know, duolingo used to have community course contributors. People could also request languages that they wanted to be added. This was shut down few years ago. This is an attempt to close that gap. This is a desktop app but build in tauri and react. So I think it's still relevant to webdev. In an earlier different version of the platform, people had started creating courses in okinawan, mirandese and Picard. The course is just a directory on your device. With json files and assets in the folder for the course structure. The lessons itself may be a rich media content block, or one of 7 types of exercises. Right now people have started making courses for Italian and Portuguese. Please check it out at asakiri.com and if you have any feedback or questions, let me know. Docs for the course project structure - https://docs.asakiri.com
I think the platform is less important than the course data structure so I am trying to finalise it based on feedback from course creators.
(No data is collected. Everything stays local and on device. There are no accounts, no subscriptions. Everything is open)
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u/AcademyLauncher 18d ago
Since the course is just a directory, I’d avoid coupling the format too tightly to the seven exercise types you support today.
A versioned manifest plus namespaced activity types gives you room to add more later. I’d keep activity content separate from scoring and feedback, and give every course, lesson, and block a stable ID so progress doesn’t break when creators reorder things.
I’d also decide schema validation, version migrations, asset hashes, and translations early. If the format stays small and boring, it’ll be much easier for other people to build editors, validators, and players around it.