Aula
Aula is a European Portuguese course for A1, A2, and B1. The language in it is from Portugal: vocabulary, conjugations, and grammar follow European usage (autocarro, estou a fazer, tu in everyday speech). Lessons and reference material live in the app, and progress is saved to the signed-in account. The interface is in European Portuguese.
Brand
The mark is a guitarra portuguesa. The vectors are in public/brand/. aula-mark-master.svg is navy #1B2B61 on a transparent 24×24 grid; aula-mark-white.svg is the same mark in white. The default app icon is the dark tile, aula-app-icon-dark.svg, also used for src/app/icon.png, src/app/apple-icon.png, and src/app/favicon.ico. Lockups are that mark plus the outlined Geist Semibold wordmark. Keep 3 units of clear space (one eighth of the mark height) and do not draw the solid mark smaller than 24px. Do not redraw, stretch, rotate, or add effects. Recolour only with navy, canvas #F7F7F6, white, or black.
Features
Today. The home screen greets you, starts the day's session, and shows reviews that are due plus the current streak.
Lessons. There are 50 curriculum lessons: 20 at A1, 20 at A2, and 10 at B1. The next session is assembled from words, verbs, and grammar you still need to practise.
Practice. A session mixes new material with exercises: vocabulary, grammar, conjugations, multiple choice, typed answers, true or false, fill-in-the-blank, translation, sentence building, a word bank, and error correction.
Library. 2,203 vocabulary items, 48 grammar topics, and 289 verbs across nine tenses (present through the future subjunctive, plus the imperative). Culture covers sayings, false friends, etiquette, and regional expressions.
Exams. One CIPLE-style mock, with reading and writing, listening, and speaking. Further papers are listed as coming soon.
Progress. Each word, verb, and grammar topic has a mastery level and a spaced-repetition review date. There is also a study calendar, goals, personal notes, and a progress page. Search opens from the sidebar or with ⌘K.
Professor Elísio. The tutor plans a practice session from your recent work, and a margin note in a chapter answers from the passage you are reading. Both are built inside the app from the course content and your progress. There is no model and no paid API.
Audio. Pronunciation buttons play pre-generated European Portuguese clips from Supabase Storage. When a clip is missing, playback falls back to a browser voice whose language is exactly pt-PT.
Accounts. Email and password, or Google, through Supabase. A new account goes through a short onboarding (why you are learning, level, how often you want to study).
Stack
- Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS 4
- Supabase Auth, Postgres, and Storage (
src/lib/supabase)
- Zod, for the shape of a question sent to Elísio
- Playwright, for the tests in
e2e/
Local setup
You need Node.js, pnpm, and a Supabase project. Install from pnpm-lock.yaml. npm install currently stops on a Storybook peer conflict (@storybook/addon-essentials 8 against storybook 10).
pnpm install
cp .env.local.example .env.local
Fill in .env.local:
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_URL | Supabase project URL |
NEXT_PUBLIC_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY | Supabase anon key |
TEST_USER_EMAIL | Used by the Playwright tests |
TEST_USER_PASSWORD | Used by the Playwright tests |
Apply the SQL in supabase/migrations/ to that project, in filename order: 001_initial_schema.sql through 015_create_content_mastery.sql, then 20261010120000_missing_tables_and_audio_bucket.sql. Those files create the tables the app writes to (profiles, lesson progress, notes, calendar events, goals, tutor sessions, content mastery, and others) and the public audio storage bucket.
In the Supabase dashboard, enable email sign-up. Google sign-in also needs the Google provider configured on that project.
pnpm dev
Open http://localhost:3000.
Scripts
| Command | What it does |
|---|
pnpm dev | Development server |
pnpm build | Production build |
pnpm start | Serve the production build |
pnpm lint | ESLint |
pnpm audio:generate | Generate missing pt-PT clips with Piper and upload them to the audio bucket |
audio:generate is a local tool. It expects a Piper virtualenv at scripts/tts/.venv, a voice model in scripts/tts/voices/, ffmpeg on your PATH, and SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY in .env.local alongside the public Supabase URL. The app runs without it; buttons simply have no clip until audio is uploaded.
Playwright lives in e2e/. Its config boots the app with pnpm dev and signs in with TEST_USER_EMAIL and TEST_USER_PASSWORD.
pnpm exec playwright test
