project-starter

Starter template for the Python software project course. It gives your team every document you must submit — proposal, SRS, flowcharts, report, presentation outline, viva prep — as fill-in-the-blank templates, plus stubs for the AI module your project includes. Each section links to the learn.kevalabs.com guide that teaches the concept you need to fill it in.

You don't start from a blank page. You start from here.

How to use this repo

1. One team member clicks Use this template → Create a new repository (name it after your project, e.g. cafe-order-engine). Make it private if you like, and add your teammates as collaborators.
2. Everyone clones it. New to Git? Read How Git works first.
3. First assignment (do it now): find your project's pack in docs/packs/, copy it to docs/project-pack.md, delete the other three packs, commit, and push. Congratulations — your repo is now your project's repo, and you've made your first team commit.
4. Work through the milestones below. Every document in docs/ tells you what to write and what to read.

What's where

Path	What it is	When you need it
docs/project-pack.md	Your project's scope, data model, and AI formulation	Day 1, then constantly
docs/proposal.md	Proposal template	Milestone 1
docs/srs.md	Software Requirements Specification template	Milestone 2
docs/flowcharts.md	Flowchart + ER diagram starters (Mermaid — renders on GitHub)	Milestone 2
docs/report.md	Final project report template	Milestone 4
docs/presentation.md	Mid-term and final presentation outlines	Milestones 3 & 4
docs/viva-prep.md	Questions the examiners will ask, with where to find answers	Before the viva
labs/	Session worksheets — the follow-along labs, one per class	Every session
ai/search.py	Frontier-loop search skeleton (BFS done; DFS, greedy, A* are yours)	Cafe, Restaurant, Party Palace teams
ai/rules.py	Backward-chaining engine (engine done; the rules are yours)	Gym team
src/	Your Django project lives here — you create it in the lab sessions	From the CRUD milestone on

Milestones (mapped to your marks)

Internal — 60 marks

• M1 · Proposal (10 marks) — docs/proposal.md complete, topic approved by supervisor.
• M2 · Requirements & design — docs/srs.md and docs/flowcharts.md complete. (Not separately marked, but the mid-term presentation is built from these.)
• M3 · Mid-term presentation (20 marks) — working CRUD demo + AI module plan. Outline in docs/presentation.md.
• M4 · Pre-final submission & final presentation (30 marks) — working app with AI module integrated, report drafted, demo rehearsed.

External — 40 marks

• M5 · Project documentation (20 marks) — docs/report.md finished and printed.
• M6 · Final presentation (10 marks) — same demo, tighter.
• M7 · Viva (10 marks) — every member can answer everything in docs/viva-prep.md.

Ground rules (agreed scope for all teams)

These keep the project finishable in 45 hours. Breaking them needs supervisor approval, and the answer is probably no:

• Django + PostgreSQL, server-rendered templates only. No JavaScript frameworks, no REST APIs, no real-time features. (PostgreSQL setup is a one-time cost per machine — src/README.md walks you through it.)
• Django admin is your back-office. Menu items, tables, plans, vendors — managed there, not in hand-built screens.
• No payments, no email/SMS, no user registration. At most one staff login. Customer-facing forms take a name and phone number.
• The AI part is a pure-Python module (ai/) with plain functions your views call. It must run and be demonstrable on its own, without Django.

Reading path

The guides are ordered for you in the From zero to your first Python web project roadmap — follow it alongside the lab sessions. Your AI reading depends on your team:

• Cafe, Restaurant, Party Palace → How AI search works
• Gym → How expert systems work (read the search guide first — backward chaining is DFS)