grades-unt

Choosing classes is a gamble. It shouldn't be.

You do not always know what you are signing up for until it is too late. grades-unt makes UNT grade distributions easier to browse by course and instructor.

Live site: untgrades.app

What the app uses today

The public website reads from encrypted static data stored with the deployed site, not live Postgres queries.

• Course and instructor data is generated from CSV exports during the data-prep workflow.
• The generated files live under unt-grade-distribution/public/encrypted/.
• The browser downloads manifest.json and only the encrypted blob needed for the selected course or instructor.
• Client-side WebCrypto decrypts the blob with NEXT_PUBLIC_DATA_KEY.
• Prisma/Postgres still exists for import, validation, migrations, and backend/API compatibility work, but it is not the primary user-facing read path.

Technical implementation

Frontend

• React 19.2.3
• Next.js 16.1.6 App Router
• TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS v4
• Recharts 3.7.0 for grade distribution charts
• jsPDF + jspdf-autotable for PDF export
• Vercel Analytics + Vercel Speed Insights for real-user monitoring

Data delivery

• Static encrypted blobs generated at build/data-prep time from CSV exports
• Manifest-driven search in the browser
• Client-side WebCrypto decryption for course and instructor pages
• CDN-backed reads through Vercel static assets
• No Prisma/Postgres runtime dependency for normal website browsing

Backend and database

• Prisma 7.4.2 with PostgreSQL/Postgres remains in the repo for seeding, migrations, validation, and backend API routes.
• Backend API routes use explicit Prisma select clauses and indexes for faster query paths when those routes are used.
• DATABASE_URL should point at the pooled Postgres in production-like serverless environments.
• DIRECT_URL should point at the direct Postgres host for local development and bulk operations.

Repository layout

.
├── README.md
├── DOCUMENTATION.md
└── unt-grade-distribution/
    ├── README.md
    ├── DOCUMENTATION.md
    ├── ENCRYPT_README.md
    ├── PERF_VALIDATION_RUNBOOK.md
    ├── prisma/
    ├── public/encrypted/
    ├── src/
    └── tools/

The Next.js app lives in unt-grade-distribution/. Root-level docs provide repo-wide context; app-level docs provide implementation details.

Development workflow

Keep the existing branch/PR/review model:

1. Start from an up-to-date main.
2. Create a separate branch for each change, for example feat/..., fix/..., perf/..., or docs/....
3. Commit with a conventional message.
4. Push the branch and open a PR into main.
5. Wait for automated checks and review before merging.
6. Do not push directly to main unless the maintainers intentionally choose to bypass the normal review path.

Useful commands

cd unt-grade-distribution
npm install
npm test
npx tsc --noEmit
DATABASE_URL="postgresql://user:***@host:5432/db" DIRECT_URL="postgresql://user:***@host:5432/db" npm run build

Maintainers

• Dylan Joseph
• Gautham Nair

Initial contributors

• Sai Are
• Akhil Tumati

Planned features

• SPOT Evaluations — integrate Student Perceptions of Teaching data for instructors.
• More historical coverage — expand beyond the currently imported semesters as additional source exports become available.
• Smarter client aggregates — keep compare-page aggregation fast by precomputing or indexing more summary data in the encrypted manifest layer without reintroducing a live database dependency for public reads.