pleb.school Quick Start (Evaluator Edition)

This guide is for people deciding whether to fork and self-host pleb.school. It shows the shortest path through both the learner flow and the admin flow.

1) Experience the learner flow (3 minutes)

• Visit / and browse the featured sections
• Open /courses and /content
• Open a paid item to see the zap purchase dialog
• Visit Profile > Activity to see purchase history
• Visit Profile > Accounts to see linking options

2) Experience the admin flow (5 minutes)

• Add your pubkey to config/admin.json or set Role.admin in the database
• Open /create to draft a resource or course
• Preview and publish, then confirm a noteId is stored
• Visit Profile > Content to inspect, edit, or republish content

3) Configure your instance

• auth.json: sign-in providers and copy
• content.json: homepage sections and filters
• payments.json: zap presets and purchase UX
• nostr.json: relay sets for publishing and reading
• theme.json and copy.json: branding and text

4) Required environment variables

• DATABASE_URL
• NEXTAUTH_SECRET
• NEXTAUTH_URL
• PRIVKEY_ENCRYPTION_KEY

Config files are shipped to the client, so keep secrets in env vars.

If you can complete the steps above, you understand the core operating model of pleb.school.