BL-006Learning Experience
BuiltMattie Labs Learning Platform
A free, progress-tracked learning system: 8 guided paths and all 48 lessons built, with sequential unlocks, interactive exercises, path capstones, and quizzes — no account required.
01The problem
What needed to change
Most AI education assumes too much — jargon-heavy courses, scattered videos, or paywalled programs. Complete beginners need a structured, safe place to start that doesn't ask for an account or a credit card first.
02Context & constraints
What shaped the build
Live at /learn. The full V1 curriculum is built: all 48 lessons across 8 paths run on a reusable typed lesson-block engine, and every path ends in a capstone whose exercise produces an artifact the learner keeps.
No accounts or backend — progress lives in the visitor's browser
The beginner test — every word plain or defined
Lessons only get URLs once their content exists — no empty shells
Corruption-resilient progress — broken storage degrades safely, never crashes
03Goals
What success meant
- Structure the whole journey from "what is AI" to workflow-level skills
- Track real progress without accounts
- Unlock lessons sequentially so beginners aren't dropped into the deep end
- Set the quality bar with one deeply built template lesson, then scale it to the full catalog
04Approach
How it was built
Model the curriculum first
8 paths and 48 lessons are catalogued as data with explicit ordering and prerequisites — the structure exists before the content, so "coming soon" is honest.
Build the progress engine
A validated localStorage store tracks sections, exercises, quizzes, and completion per lesson; lock states and percentages are always derived, never stored.
Template one lesson deeply, then generalize
Intro to AI was the fully built reference — objectives, sections, exercise, quiz, completion — and the typed block engine extracted from it now renders all 48 lessons from pure data.
Generate routes from data
Path and lesson pages statically generate from the catalog — a lesson URL only exists once its data says the content is built.
05What was built
Capabilities on record
Three-level architecture: hub, path, lesson
Progress tracking with sequential lesson unlocking
An 18-type lesson block engine with two interactive exercise kinds, inline knowledge checks, and quizzes
Path capstones whose exercises produce keepable artifacts — plans, checklists, briefs
Bookmarks, local notes, and resume-learning — all per-device
Derived progress bars on every hub tile and path page
Resilient localStorage progress with versioned migration and a dev-only reset
06System view
How it flows
Choose a path
8 categories, beginner-first
Learn
Sections, callouts, a real exercise
Check
A short quiz confirms understanding
Progress
Completion unlocks the next lesson
07Outcome
Where it landed
A complete V1 curriculum on a complete platform: every lesson in the catalog is built, every path ends in a capstone artifact, and the whole system runs without accounts, backends, or AI API calls.
On the record
8 learning paths
48 built lessons — 100% of the V1 catalog
18 typed lesson block types
42 Prompt Library prompts cross-linked from lessons
0 AI API calls — every exercise runs in the learner's own tool
Only verifiable facts appear here — no estimated business metrics, ever.
08Field notes
Lessons & what's next
What was learned
- Deriving lock and progress state instead of storing it eliminated a whole class of sync bugs.
- Cataloguing all 48 lessons up front made "coming soon" honest instead of vague.
- A written authoring contract plus a machine validator made scaling from 3 lessons to 48 safe without touching the engine.
Future work
- Full human copy-review pass over the new lessons (ledger in the repo)
- Measured lesson durations from real read-throughs
- Additional interactive exercise kinds as content demands them
09Related resources
Keep going from here
More from the build log
Related builds
BL-008Consulting Experience
Project Intake Lab
A guided intake that turns "I think AI could help" into a structured project brief — with a readiness snapshot, a service match, and a draft master prompt, all derived by plain rules.
View Case StudyBL-003Prompt System
Prompt Library
A searchable, filterable library of 65 working prompts with starter packs, a fill-in-the-blanks customizer, and a shareable page for every prompt.
View Case StudyBL-007Interactive Tool
Tools Hub
Three small interactive tools — a prompt builder, an AI skill check, and a use-case finder — that give visitors something to do, not just read. No signup, no AI calls.
View Case StudyHave a problem shaped like this one?
The Project Intake Lab turns your situation into a structured brief — readiness snapshot, service match, and a draft master prompt included. No commitment, nothing sent until you send it.