case-study --education-platform
§IV · PLATEAfterBoards & AfterGrad
Live · in productionExam-prep products for IPMAT, CUET and CAT — two Next.js web apps and two Expo mobile apps on one Turborepo codebase. Founding & sole engineer: shared product architecture, reconciliation-safe payouts, real-time multiplayer, and a timed exam engine that has served 100,000+ attempts.
project-brief --outcome-first
§IV · BRIEFWhat had to change
Run two exam-prep brands across web and mobile without duplicating product logic or slowing a small team with manual content operations.
What I shipped
Four production apps on one Turborepo, covering exams, analytics, payments, community, native mobile features, admin operations, and AI-assisted content workflows.
What the business gained
The exam engine has served 100,000+ attempts, while the question-production workflow reduced exam creation from days to roughly 30 minutes.
systems --under-the-hood
§IV · SCHEMATIC- One shared product codebase4 apps · 17 pkgs
Two Next.js web apps and two Expo mobile apps share auth, UI, server actions, and product logic through a Turborepo monorepo.
- Reconciliation-safe payouts
Prevented double-payouts by treating gateway failures by certainty: release funds only on a provable failure; keep ambiguous transfers pending until webhook / status-reconcile / admin resolves them.
- Real-time multiplayer (Ably)6-player rooms
Ably multiplayer with scoped client tokens, server-authoritative scoring, atomic double-score prevention, and coordinator failover.
- Timed exam engine100,000+ attempts
Resumable timed attempts, server-authoritative scoring, section-wise analytics, and disconnect recovery across 100,000+ attempts.
- AI question workflowdays → ~30 min
Versioned prompts, multi-provider fallback, and batch generation/review workflows that cut exam creation from days to ~30 minutes.
- Redis resilience
Redis failures made survivable with typed cache keys, singleflight stampede protection, negative caching, and circuit-breaker fallbacks.
- Native mobile operationsiOS · Android
Two Expo apps add native push, Face ID app lock, deep links, haptics, store-safe payment handling, and shared hybrid screens over the web products.
context --how-it-works
§IV · NOTESAfterBoards serves IPMAT and CUET students; AfterGrad serves CAT aspirants. I built and operate both products end to end as the founding and sole engineer.
The monorepo now contains two Next.js products, two Expo mobile apps, and 17 shared packages. That shared foundation keeps auth, product rules, payments, content tooling, and release work aligned across both brands.
The work is not just feature delivery: it includes the failure paths underneath money movement, timed attempts, real-time play, mobile releases, cache outages, and ongoing support operations.