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Co-founder, with Shubham Singh. I lead the tech.

AstraTech AI

The AI and coding institute I co-founded in Jamshedpur, where students learn by building

LiveSince 2024astratechai.com

Video in the works

AstraTech AI

Me telling the comeback story, with real classes from summer 2026.

About the project

An offline AI and full-stack institute in Jamshedpur. Students learn by building real projects, in batches and hackathon teams. astratechai.com is its website, enrolment system, certificate checker and exam platform.

AstraTech AI is an offline institute in Jamshedpur that teaches AI and full-stack development. I co-founded it with Shubham Singh. Students don't sit through slides: they build real projects in batches, work in hackathon teams, and finish with a certificate anyone can check.

It took three tries. We started online in 2024 and it didn't work. We moved offline in 2025, and that didn't work either. In 2026 we went offline again with a new way of teaching, and it stuck: about 60 students in one summer across Gamharia, Sonari and Parsudih, and in August 2026 it became AstraTech Technologies LLP.

astratechai.com is more than a brochure. It takes enrolments, runs each batch's online exams, grades them, and issues certificates with a QR code that anyone can verify.

How it works

  1. Enrol

    A student finds us on Google or the website, picks a course and enrols online.

  2. Learn by building

    Batches meet offline. Every module ends in something the student builds and pushes to GitHub.

  3. Take the exam

    Each student gets their own time window and a paper of 8 questions picked by a seeded hash: 4 multiple choice, 2 short answers, 1 JavaScript logic question and 1 practical. Answers save as they go, and the attempt closes on time.

  4. Get graded

    Scripts mark the multiple choice, score each student's practical GitHub repo against a rubric, and flag copied code with file fingerprints.

  5. Get certified

    Passing students get a certificate with an ID, a QR code and a signature. Anyone can look it up on the site or download the PDF.

Under the hood

Website
Next.js 15, with local SEO for Jamshedpur, a sitemap, and an llms.txt file for AI search engines.
Exam engine
Exams, question banks, a time window per student, timed attempts that close on their own, autosave and file uploads.
Admin
Exam list, submissions, grading, bulk scheduling of student windows, report cards and a certificates dashboard.
Certificates
Public lookup by ID or QR code, and PDF download with jsPDF.
Data and media
PostgreSQL through Prisma, images on Cloudinary, emails with Nodemailer.

What I did

  • Co-founded it: online in 2024 and offline in 2025, and neither worked. In 2026 we went offline again, and this time it stuck
  • Led the 2025 website build and merged 28 of its 43 pull requests
  • Built an online exam system from scratch: exams, question banks, a time window for each student, timed attempts that close on their own, and file uploads
  • Gave every student 8 questions (4 MCQ, 2 short answer, 1 JavaScript logic, 1 practical) picked from a bank by a seeded hash, so each paper is fair, different, and can be rebuilt exactly
  • Wrote grading scripts that mark MCQs, score each student's practical GitHub repo against a rubric, and catch copied code with file fingerprints
  • Built the admin side: exam list, submissions, grading, bulk scheduling of student windows, report cards and a certificates dashboard
  • Public certificate checking: anyone can look up a certificate by ID, with a QR code, signature and a PDF download
  • Local SEO for Jamshedpur, plus a sitemap and an llms.txt file for AI search engines
  • Redesigned the home page in 2026 around the courses, the founders and our Google Maps listing
  • Taught the batches: about 60 students in summer 2026, in Gamharia, Sonari and Parsudih
  • Registered AstraTech Technologies LLP in August 2026
  • Prepared student teams for HackBIOS 2K26

What was new

  • My first exam engine: fair question sets per student that can be rebuilt from a seed
  • Grading coding practicals at scale by cloning students' repos and scoring them with a rubric
  • Certificates anyone can verify in public by ID or QR code
  • SEO for AI search (llms.txt), not just Google
  • Running real exams for live batches, including re-exam windows

Problems I hit, and how I fixed them

  1. Two autosaves for the same answer arrived together. Both tried to create the row and one crashed on a unique key.

    Fix Catch that exact database error and update the row instead.

  2. Downloading a certificate as PDF crashed, because the PDF library couldn't read modern oklch() colours.

    Fix Switched to a version of the library that supports them.

  3. Roll-number login sometimes returned the wrong student, when the number matched someone else's college roll number.

    Fix Search the institute roll number first, then removed the college-roll fallback completely.

  4. Students pasted Google Drive links instead of uploading, and double-clicked while answers were saving.

    Fix Accept Drive links as answers, and disable the buttons while saving.

  5. Two admin certificate routes sat at the same level and clashed.

    Fix Moved one under its own path.

  6. The generated database client was committed to git, including 20 MB temp files.

    Fix Removed it from the repo.

Timeline

  1. 2024Started teaching online. It didn't work.
  2. 2025Moved offline. It didn't work out either.
  3. May–Jul 2025Led the new website build.
  4. 2026Offline again, third try. This time it stuck.
  5. Summer 2026About 60 students across three locations.
  6. Jul–Aug 2026Exam system, certificates, new home page, SEO.
  7. Aug 2026AstraTech Technologies LLP registered.
  8. Sep 2026Student teams for HackBIOS 2K26.

Screenshots

  • The AstraTech AI website home page, live at astratechai.com
    astratechai.com, live

To be clear

The PhonePe payment flow on the site was written by Rohit Raj. I merged and shipped it, but I don't count it as my code.