Mobile app

GrowSmart

A training authority’s courses, moved off scattered links into a real, trackable product — with certificates people can verify.

Client: Education / training authority
Role: Full-stack mobile developer, solo
Platform: iOS + Android + web, one codebase
Scope: Student app + in-app admin panel
Status: v1.0.2 · production ready, store packs prepared

// overview

Small training institutes and course authorities usually have no learning platform of their own — they run on WhatsApp groups, shared drives and video links. The result is no progress tracking, no assessment, no proof of completion, and no secure access control on paid content.

GrowSmart replaces all of that. Built with React Native and Expo for iOS, Android and web from a single TypeScript codebase, it gives students a structured path: browse published courses, enroll instantly in free ones or pay through Stripe Checkout for premium tracks, work through text and video lessons, and validate their understanding with auto-graded quizzes.

Progress is tracked lesson by lesson, and once a course is completed the app issues a certificate with a unique verification ID that learners can preview, export as a PDF, and share straight from their phone.

Behind the app sits Supabase and PostgreSQL, where access control is enforced at the database layer through 48 row-level security policies — paid lesson content simply is not readable by users who have not been enrolled through a verified payment. The same app ships a full admin panel, so the client runs the platform day to day without developer involvement.

Scale

11.5k+

Lines of TypeScript & SQL

27

App screens

11

Database tables

48

Row-level security policies

2

Edge functions

3

Platforms from one codebase

// what it does

Key features

Learning

Browse published courses with search and free/paid badges
One-tap enrollment for free courses; Stripe Checkout for paid ones
Text and video lessons with attached downloadable files
Lesson-by-lesson progress tracking with a completion percentage

Assessment & certificates

Multiple-choice quizzes, auto-scored with a configurable passing score
Per-question answer storage, attempt history and best score
Certificates auto-issued on completion with a unique verification ID
In-app preview, PDF export and native share sheet

Student experience

Dashboard with live stats — enrolled courses, lessons completed, quizzes passed, certificates earned
Continue-learning shortcuts
Profile with account details, avatar and theme toggle
Full light/dark theming, system-aware and persisted

Admin panel (in-app)

Create, edit, publish and price courses; upload thumbnails from the gallery
Add text or video lessons, control order, attach documents via document picker
Quiz builder — questions, options, correct answers and passing score
User management and full Stripe payment tracking

Auth & access

Email/password signup and login with email verification
Forgot-password and reset over a growsmart:// deep link
Role-based routing — one app, separate student and admin route groups
Admin-only screens backed by admin-only database policies

Data model

11 tables including courses, lessons, quizzes, attempts, progress, certificates and payments
48 row-level security policies
Indexed foreign keys, updated_at triggers and cascading deletes
An auth trigger that auto-creates a profile on signup

// engineering

The hard parts

The problems that shaped the architecture, and how each one was solved.

01

Paid content that cannot be bypassed

Client-side "isEnrolled" checks are trivial to fake. Enrollment and payment verification happen server-side through an edge function and a Stripe webhook, and content access is enforced in RLS policies — so even a modified client cannot read paid lessons.

02

PDF certificates without a rendering backend

The certificate is generated from a styled HTML template and converted to a PDF on-device with expo-print — no server rendering cost, and it shares straight through the native share sheet.

03

Perceived performance

Every screen was running its own query, which made navigation feel slow. A centralised DataCacheContext bulk-fetches courses, lessons, enrollments, quizzes, attempts, certificates and payments at boot, then selectively refreshes after mutations — so screens open instantly and pull-to-refresh syncs the cache.

04

One codebase, two products

The student and admin experiences are built from separate route groups over a shared design system, with protected route guards keyed to the user’s role — so there is no second app to maintain.

05