Studify moves out of the platform it grew up in

Studify, our English tutor, grew up inside the Studify platform. Its programme, the test sets its lessons are measured on and its storefront copy all lived in the platform's repository, next to the engine. On 17 October we moved Studify into a repository of its own, so that the product and the platform are developed separately.

How tangled it was

Studify was never just a folder in the platform. The platform's own tests ran the lesson engine on Studify's lessons and the web app on Studify's storefront. The platform checked Studify's copy rules and the facts of its programme. Studify's colours and mark sat in the platform's code.

So the cut came last. First the copy rules and the programme's facts became checks the product runs itself. Its test sets and its look became its own data. The platform's tests moved to a test product of their own. By then the cut was a plain move: the files went over byte for byte.

What the repository holds

No code. It holds the programme: 12 courses, 216 lessons, the placement lesson before them and the phases a lesson runs through. It holds the test sets the lessons are measured on, and the storefront's words and pictures: its pages, legal texts, demo and mark.

On every change, a check in the repository runs all of it against the platform's contract.

A storefront the platform runs

Studify sells to learners directly. Its storefront at studify.today, its plans and its checkout run on the platform, built from Studify's data.

prep2go works the other way round. The partner's own site sells the attempts, at its own price and with its own refunds. The platform credits each paid attempt the partner reports, opens the exam with a single-use link and hands the protocol back (how that seam works).

So Studify is the product that proves the platform can run a whole storefront from data alone.

One commit, pinned

The platform builds Studify from one exact commit, recorded in the platform's own repository. Not a branch: a branch would move under the product's feet, and production would be built from something nobody had checked.

A new version reaches learners only when that pin moves, in a change to the platform, after the platform and the product pass their checks as a pair. Next to the pin, the platform keeps its own decisions about the product: where recordings are stored and which face the lessons have. It reads Studify's repository with a read-only key.

Nothing changed for learners

That evening, all eight storefront pages matched the previous build line by line, and a test lesson ran in production on the new build, with the face taken from the pin.

prep2go made the same move on 24 September. Both of our products are now built the same way, and a new product starts there too: the platform lays out its repository with one command.