Chestnut (school management platform)
A school-management platform built for 100,000+ users
A full-stack platform for students, staff, results, and promotions, designed to scale to a large user base on a modern TypeScript stack.
Shipped a production platform (chestnutschool.com) on Next.js, Node/Express, and Docker on AWS, architected to support 100,000+ students and faculty.
Context
A full-stack school-management platform (students, staff, results, and promotions) built end to end and deployed for real use at chestnutschool.com.
Problem and constraint
The system had to model a whole school's workflows and scale to a large user base without falling over, while staying maintainable for a small team.
Approach and key decisions
- Built the front end in Next.js / React with React Query for data fetching and caching, and Tailwind for a consistent UI.
- Backed it with Node/Express services and a typed data layer; containerized with Docker for reproducible deploys on AWS.
- Modeled the data around the real entities (students, staff, results, promotions) so features compose instead of special-casing.
Outcome
A production platform serving its school, architected to support 100,000+ students and faculty across classes.
What I'd do differently
Introduce end-to-end tests (Playwright) earlier: the same discipline I now build in from the start.