📄 Live version: reports.schoolstorytellers.com/handbook — kept in sync with the actual system. This Notion copy is for reading and reference.
Written for someone brand new to all of this. You don't need a computer-science background — you need curiosity and a bit of care. Read it top to bottom once and you'll get how the whole thing fits together; come back to any section when you need it.
✅ New to all this? Start here. Three things will make everything below click:
- You will not be writing code by hand. You'll mostly ask an AI assistant (Claude Code) to do things in plain English, and check its work.
- You almost can't break anything permanently. Every change is saved with a full history, so anything can be undone. You're free to try things.
- When a word looks scary (commit, push, deploy, API), it has a simple meaning — explained the first time it appears. If you get stuck, the answer is usually "ask Claude Code to explain it" or "ask Janet."
This is a reporting dashboard for a marketing agency that runs ad campaigns for private K–12 schools. Every two weeks each school gets a performance report. The dashboard's job: pull the ad numbers automatically, draft the report with AI, let a human review & send it, and keep a permanent record.
Three pieces make it work:
The live site is reports.schoolstorytellers.com. There is no separate database, no server to manage — it's all files in GitHub, served by Vercel.
Claude Code is an AI assistant for working on code. The easiest way to use it is the Claude desktop app (Mac or Windows) — you open this project in it and chat with it like a normal conversation. You describe what you want — "the AI summaries aren't loading, can you fix it" — and it reads the code, finds the problem, makes the change, and can even test it. You don't have to know how to program; you have to be able to describe the problem clearly and review what it did.
How you'll actually use it: open the Claude app, point it at this project, and type your request in plain English. It shows you each change. When you're happy, you tell it to save (commit) and publish (push) — in your own words, you don't type any commands yourself.
(There's also a terminal/command-line version for developers who prefer it — but the desktop app does everything you'll need. Download it from claude.com/product/claude-code.)