Lab Student

A hands-on workshop where you fork this repo, open a Codespace, and across four labs: configure Copilot, implement a feature, and deploy to GitHub Pages. By the end of the day you have a live personal dashboard showing your AI experiment results.

An AI Experiment Log — a web app that tracks your experiments with AI coding tools. Each entry records the tool you used, what you tried, what happened, and your verdict. The app includes:

• A scrollable log of all experiments
• A dashboard with verdict breakdown and tool comparison charts
• A form to add new entries
• An API that reads/writes a JSON data file

The repo ships three backend implementations (Node, Python, .NET) so you can pick the language you are most comfortable with.

├── .devcontainer/          # Codespace configuration (Node 22, Python 3.13, .NET 10)
├── .github/
│   ├── ISSUE_TEMPLATE/     # Feature request template
│   └── workflows/          # CI and deploy workflows (workflow_dispatch)
├── data/
│   └── experiments.json    # Shared data file (2 starter entries)
├── frontend/               # SPA (HTML + JS + CSS, Chart.js)
├── node/                   # Express API on port 3000
├── python/                 # Flask API on port 5000
├── dotnet/                 # ASP.NET Core API on port 5001
└── labs/                   # Lab instructions (0–3)

1. Click Fork at the top of this repo
2. In your fork, click Code → Codespaces → Create codespace on main
3. Wait for the container to build (installs all three language dependencies)

Node (port 3000):

cd node

npm install

npm start

Python (port 5000):

cd python

pip install -r requirements.txt

python -m flask run --port 5000

.NET (port 5001):

cd dotnet 
dotnet run

Once the API is running, click the globe icon next to the forwarded port in the Ports tab. You should see the app with two starter entries and a "Summary not yet available" message on the dashboard.

Note: The frontend defaults to http://localhost:3000. If you are using Python or .NET, update the API_BASE variable in frontend/app.js to match your port.

This workshop is designed to work with the Copilot free tier (2,000 completions + 50 premium requests/month). All Core labs are completable using inline completions only — zero premium requests required.

Want unlimited chat for today? GitHub offers a 30-day free Copilot Pro trial.

Each lab has Core (everyone completes) and Challenge (stretch goal) tiers, each available in Guided (step-by-step) or Self-directed (goal only) mode.

Test frameworks are pre-installed but no test files exist yet — writing your first test is a Lab 2 challenge.

# Node (Jest)
cd node && npm test

# Python (pytest)
cd python && pytest

# .NET (xUnit)
cd dotnet/Api.Tests && dotnet test