SkillMap
Career Roadmaps
A full-stack learning planner for self-taught developers
The Problem
Self-taught paths have no map
Most learning resources for developers are either too generic ("learn JavaScript in 30 days") or too fragmented across blog posts and YouTube playlists. Self-taught developers end up building their own curriculum from scratch — a process that's easy to abandon at the first gap.
SkillMap treats the career roadmap itself as a shared artifact. Users fork a pre-built path (Frontend, Backend, Data Science), adapt it to their goals, and publish their version back to a community feed. The system tracks progress on individual milestones as learning challenges.
Engineering
Key decisions
Template-first architecture
Users start from a pre-built roadmap (Frontend, Backend, Data Science) and fork it. This kills the cold-start problem of building a career path from scratch — the data model treats templates as first-class citizens with versioning.
Full-stack ownership, end to end
Next.js frontend talks to a Spring Boot REST API backed by PostgreSQL. The whole stack runs in Docker — one docker-compose up and the team of three had a predictable local dev loop, no environment drift between machines.
Community as a feature, not a separate product
Public roadmaps let users publish their paths to the feed. The same data structure that powers private roadmaps powers discovery — no separate content model, no separate moderation system to maintain.
Learning challenges as retention
Every roadmap milestone can be tagged as a challenge with deadlines and progress tracking. This turned a static planning tool into something users return to weekly, which is what got it ranked top 2 of 9 in the course final review.
Screens
Selected views
Outcome
What shipped
Built and shipped SkillMap as a full-stack learning platform — Next.js frontend, Spring Boot REST API, PostgreSQL persistence, and Docker orchestration for the whole stack. The project was built in a team of three for KAU CPIT 252 and was ranked top 2 of 9 by the course instructor. Currently live in production with a public demo and open-source repository.