CMU Courses

Course browsing app with a Svelte frontend and Rust API.

Maintainers

Start with the maintainer guide, feature matrix, and deployment runbook.

Run locally

1. Install Lix and log in to OpenBao by following kennel's local development and secrets guides. The development shell loads the OIDC settings and other secrets, which you can read after you join the CMU Courses team through governance. You need them for CMU sign-in; there is no local login bypass.

2. Clone the repository and enter the development shell:

   git clone ssh://forgejo@git.cmu.dev/ScottyLabs/courses.git
   cd courses
   nix develop
   

3. Prepare the local catalog if data/catalog/public.sqlite and data/catalog/member.sqlite are absent. Copy the supplied source exports into data/raw, then run:

   python3 scripts/import_catalog.py data/raw
   python3 scripts/verify_catalog.py
   

   The catalog and raw exports are intentionally ignored by Git. The local API reads data/catalog directly; it does not need CDN or S3 credentials. It creates data/private/users.sqlite for local personal data. Keep that file out of Git and static assets. See backend setup and data audit.

4. Start PostgreSQL, the Ricochet OIDC callback relay, the browser API on port 3002 and the Svelte app on port 5173 from the repository root:

   pitchfork start --local
   

5. Open http://localhost:5173. Use Sign in to test the configured CMU identity provider. The frontend proxies /api and /auth to the API, and Ricochet returns the callback to port 5173. The API needs APP_URL=http://localhost:5173 and the callback URL supplied by the development secrets.

If the API cannot start, first check that the catalog exists and that the development shell loaded the OIDC settings. A 403 from /api/me after login means the provider did not supply a verified CMU email in the ID token or matching UserInfo response. An anonymous 401 from /api/me before login is expected.

Preview a production build

From sites/web, with the development environment loaded:

deno task build
deno task preview

Open http://localhost:4173 to inspect the built UI. Vite's preview server does not use the development /api and /auth proxy, so use the development server above to test sign-in. Rebuild after changes. Deployment serves sites/web/build through courses-web-api using STATIC_DIR.

Useful commands

Command	Run from	Purpose
deno task check	sites/web	Check Svelte and TypeScript
deno task test	sites/web	Run frontend unit tests
cargo test -p courses-web-api	Repository root	Run API unit tests

More details: architecture and scraper usage.