A lesson/activity planning application for Primary School teachers in Botswana.
# Bots Teaching Aid
A simple, form-based web app that helps Botswana primary school teachers (Standard 1–7)
quickly generate lesson plans or single classroom activities using the Claude API. Teachers
fill in a short form (subject, grade, topic, resources on hand, optional reference notes/image)
and get a ready-to-use plan they can read on screen or download as a PDF.
No login is required — the app uses one shared, server-side Anthropic API key and a simple
daily request cap to keep costs predictable.
## Tech stack
- Next.js (App Router) + React + TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- Anthropic API (`@anthropic-ai/sdk`), called only from a server-side API route
- Client-side PDF export via `jspdf` + `html2canvas`
## Prerequisites
- Node.js 18.18+ (Node 20 LTS recommended) and npm
- An Anthropic API key:
console.anthropic.com
This repository was created without a local Node.js install, so `node_modules` has not been
generated yet. Once Node.js is installed, run the steps below.
## Running locally
1. Install dependencies:
```bash
npm install
```
2. Set your Anthropic API key. Copy the example env file and fill in your real key:
```bash
cp .env.local.example .env.local
```
Then edit `.env.local`:
```
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
```
`.env.local` is gitignored and is only read on the server — the key is never sent to the
browser.
3. Start the dev server:
```bash
npm run dev
```
Open
localhost.
4. Build for production (optional, to sanity-check before deploying):
```bash
npm run build
npm start
```
## Deploying to Vercel
1. Push this repository to GitHub (or another Git provider Vercel supports).
2. In the Vercel dashboard, click **Add New → Project** and import the
repository. Vercel will auto-detect the Next.js framework — no custom build settings needed.
3. Before the first deploy (or any time after, under **Project → Settings → Environment
Variables**), add:
- **Key:** `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`
- **Value:** your Anthropic API key
- **Environ …