MSOs lose their knowledge every spring when boards graduate. Community college MSOs have it worst: short tenures, small teams, and no link to the universities their students transfer into.
What it does
Manara Lantern links community college MSOs to a nearby university Hub, all overseen by Manara West.
Tickets: community college MSOs send requests to their Hub, which resolves them or escalates them to Manara West. Playbooks: each event’s timeline, budget, and lessons are saved so a new board can clone it. Mentorship: transfer students mentor the MSO they left by suggesting edits that the board approves. Verified members: school-email signup tracks who becomes alumni. How we built it
We wrote a detailed PRD and used it to build with Replit Agent: React, Node/Express, PostgreSQL, and Drizzle, with school-email verification.
Challenges we ran into Handling students who are alumni at one campus and members at another. Letting mentors help without overriding current boards. Protecting privacy, since membership itself is sensitive. Accomplishments that we’re proud of
A working demo of every core flow, from signup to ticket escalation, plus changes based on judge feedback: implementing a ticket system to escalate issues past the MSO within the CC to the Hub and/or Manara.
What we learned
Connecting campuses is less about features and more about continuity, trust, and knowing who to ask for help.
What’s next for Manara Lantern
Linking community colleges to multiple universities, mentor matching, a mobile app, and expansion across the West Coast.
Built With
- claude
- drizzle
- etc
- express.js
- node.js
- openapi
- postgresql
- react
- replit
- tailwind
- typescript
- vite
