Scaffold

Inspiration

I watched friends and family complete university level courses using tools that felt behind the quality of the education they were delivering. Learning content was often visually dated, difficult to navigate, and inaccessible. I wanted to explore what course creation could look like if it felt as intuitive as writing a modern document like Notion.

What it does

Scaffold is an open-source course authoring tool built with Tiptap and ProseMirror. It lets educators create rich, interactive learning experiences through a familiar document-style editor without rigid forms or outdated learning management software.

How we built it

I built Scaffold using a custom agentic development workflow that I refined over the past year. AI agents help move each feature through the complete development lifecycle: gathering requirements, shaping the architecture, planning implementation, writing and reviewing code, and functionally testing the finished experience.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest challenge was designing the editor’s interaction system. Scaffold layers consistent click, selection, drag, resize, and editing behaviours across different ProseMirror node types. Making those interactions feel natural while avoiding conflicts, nested controls, and draggable content required careful ownership of events and state.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I’m especially proud of the interaction system. It turns a collection of complex editor primitives into an experience that feels coherent and predictable. Authors focus on creating a course as if they were writing a document

## What we learned

I learned a great deal about ProseMirror: its document model, selection behaviour, event handling, and the boundary between editor plugins and React based NodeViews. I also learned how valuable AI agents become when they follow a disciplined workflow and are given clear ownership, constraints, and verification steps.

## What's next for Scaffold

The next step is releasing Scaffold publicly as an open-source project. The long term goal is to help educators and learning institutions move beyond inaccessible legacy authoring tools and create learning experiences that are modern, engaging, and easier for everyone to use.

Built With

• php
• prosemirror
• python
• react
• tiptap
• typescript