NidHub

Live childcare availability for families and a small ERP for the centres that publish it. Built on a vertical-agnostic booking core so clinics, hospitals and venues can be added later.

Families search licensed centres by city and age group, see open spaces and waitlist sizes, join waitlists, track their position and estimated wait, accept or decline offers, and estimate their fees and subsidy.

Centres see occupancy by room, run their waitlist and send offers, take attendance, split monthly fees between parent / subsidy / program funding and create draft invoices, and check staff-to-child ratios. Every offer and enrolment updates the public listing automatically.

All centres, families and children in the seed data are invented.

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Quick start (no database server needed)

Requires Node.js 20+.

npm install
npm run setup        # creates tables and loads sample data into ./.data/pglite
npm run dev          # http://localhost:3000

Open Sign in and pick a demo account:

• Priya Sharma (family) — on four waitlists, with one open offer to accept
• Director, Maple Early Learning Group — runs two Toronto centres (one room is short-staffed)

Without DATABASE_URL, the app uses PGlite (Postgres compiled to WASM) stored in ./.data/pglite. It allows one process at a time, so stop npm run dev before running npm run db:seed again. Reseed from scratch with npm run db:seed -- --reset.

Using real PostgreSQL

docker compose up -d
cp .env.example .env
# set DATABASE_URL=postgres://openslot:openslot@localhost:5432/openslot
npm run setup
npm run dev

Production must use PostgreSQL. Host it in a Canadian region (see the checklist below).

Scripts

Command	What it does
npm run dev	Development server
npm run build / npm start	Production build and server
npm run setup	Migrate + seed
npm run db:generate	Create a new SQL migration after changing src/db/schema.ts
npm run db:migrate	Apply migrations
npm run db:seed	Load sample data (-- --reset to wipe first)
npm run db:import-ontario	Load real Ontario centres as directory listings (-- --reset-ontario to replace)
npm test	Unit tests + an end-to-end offer/accept test against in-memory Postgres
npm run typecheck	TypeScript check

Project layout

src/
  db/
    schema.ts         Tables (Drizzle ORM). The generic booking core.
    client.ts         Postgres (DATABASE_URL) or embedded PGlite
    migrate.ts, seed.ts
  domain/             Pure logic, no database — safe to share with a mobile app
    types.ts          Age groups, queue flags, DomainError
    queue.ts          Admission order, wait estimate, offer hold time
    rules/provinces.ts  Fees, ratios and subsidy rules per province
  services/           Business operations used by both the web UI and the API
    listings.ts       Public search and availability
    queue.ts          Join, offer, accept, decline, withdraw, expire
    centre.ts         Dashboard, attendance, ratios, billing, invoices
    capacity.ts       Occupancy counts and publishing to the listing
    auth.ts           Demo sign-in (replace before a pilot)
  app/                Next.js App Router
    page.tsx          Find care
    waitlists/        Family's waitlists and offers
    subsidy/          Fee & subsidy estimator
    centre/[locationId]/  ERP: dashboard, waitlist, attendance, billing, staff
    actions.ts        Server actions behind the web forms
    api/v1/           REST API for the mobile app and centre website widgets
drizzle/              SQL migrations
tests/

Data model

Organization ─┬─ Location (vertical, province, licence, base fee, funding programs)
              │     └─ Resource (room / practitioner / court; capacity; attrs e.g. ageGroup;
              │                  publishedOpen + publishedAt = what the public sees)
              └─ User (centre_admin)

Customer (parent) ── Dependant (child) ── User (family)

QueueEntry   resource × dependant; status waiting → offered → accepted | declined | expired | withdrawn
Booking      the enrolment; active | ended; approved subsidy per month
Attendance   one row per booking per day
Staff        assigned to a resource; on/off shift
Invoice      per booking per month, split into parent / subsidy / program shares

Key rules live in code, not the database:

• Admission order: staff children, then siblings, then application date (domain/queue.ts).
• Offers hold a space for 48 hours. GET /api/cron/expire-offers releases unanswered ones.
• Accepting an offer creates the enrolment and withdraws the child's other waitlist entries, so every centre's list shrinks to real demand.
• Open spaces = capacity − active enrolments − open offers.
• Wait estimate = position × share of families who will really take the space ÷ spaces opening per month. The share starts at 0.4 — calibrate it from real offer outcomes.

Real centre data (Ontario)

Alongside the invented demo centres, you can load every licensed childcare centre in Ontario from the province's open data — about 6,350 active centres under 2,600 licensees:

# 1. Download the latest monthly file from the Ontario Data Catalogue (XLSX) into data/ontario/
# 2. Turn it into the importer's JSON (keeps only active facilities):
python scripts/extract_ontario.py data/ontario/<file>.xlsx data/ontario/active_facilities.json
# 3. Load it:
npm run db:import-ontario            # add -- --reset-ontario to replace a previous import

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗