Enable course creators to publish **Public Courses** — a new course type where content is fully accessible without signup. Public courses treat every visitor as a guest: there is no "sign in to unlock" flow, no progress tracking, no submissions sent to the server. The goal is a low-friction, SEO-indexable surface that creators can use as top-of-funnel content marketing.
1. Add a third course type: **Public** (alongside Live Class and Self Paced; Compliance stays unchanged).
2. Allow anonymous browsing of a public course's full tree (sections, lessons, exercises) with clean readable URLs.
3. Keep the implementation deliberately small: no auth gating on public courses, no server-side submissions, no analytics, no donations, no live viewer counts.
4. Give creators a single customizable **Callout** to drive viewers somewhere (main site, sign-up, paid course, etc.).
5. Design the lesson surface as a focused, distraction-free reading/watching experience.
Public courses have **one** viewer role: everyone. Authentication state does not change what a viewer can do on a public course — a logged-in user visiting a public course is treated identically to an anonymous visitor.
A public course must still have `isPublished = true` to be reachable at its public URL. An unpublished public course behaves like any other unpublished course (not accessible).
### 2. Only Auto-Gradable Question Types in Public Courses
Public courses are graded **entirely on the client**. The question-type registry already exposes an `autoGradable: boolean` flag on every question type.
- When the course type is `PUBLIC`, the question-type picker only shows question types with `autoGradable === true`.
- The API rejects attempts to attach a non-auto-gradable question to an exercise belonging to a public course.
- If a course is converted **into**`PUBLIC` and it already contains non-auto-gradable questions, the conversion is blocked with a clear error listing the offending questions. (No silent data loss.)
### 3. Lock State (reuse existing)
Public courses reuse the existing `lesson.isUnlocked` flag (and the existing `exercise.isUnlocked` flag) as the gate for "free vs gated" content.
-`isUnlocked = true` → content renders normally.
-`isUnlocked = false` → the content area is replaced by the course's **Callout** (see §5). The sidebar row for a locked item still renders, with a lock icon next to the number.
Since every visitor is treated as a guest, there is no "sign in to unlock" path. A locked item is a call-to-action surface for the creator's callout.
- Add `slug VARCHAR` to `lesson` and `exercise` tables.
- Slugs are **unique per course** across both `lesson` and `exercise` (they share the same URL segment).
- On lesson / exercise create, slug is auto-generated from the title (kebab-case, collision-resolved by appending `-2`, `-3`, ...).
- On title rename, slug is **not** automatically updated (URLs are stable).
- When the course type is `PUBLIC`, creators can edit the slug from the lesson / exercise settings UI.
- When the course type is not `PUBLIC`, slugs are still generated and stored (so converting a course to `PUBLIC` later works) but are not surfaced in the UI.
-`GET (org-site) /course/[courseSlug]` loads the **full tree** server-side: course metadata, sections, lessons, exercises, slugs, titles, order, and `isUnlocked`. No lesson bodies, no exercise question bodies.
-`GET (org-site) /course/[courseSlug]/lesson/[itemSlug]` loads the **content** of the single item server-side (video URL, lesson body, or exercise questions with answer keys). This render is SSR for SEO.
- The tree is not re-fetched when the client navigates between lesson URLs — it is passed down through the shared `+layout.server.ts`.
Reference designs in `prd/public-courses/design/`:
-`lesson-page-reference.png` — overall layout
-`lesson-page-full.png` — full composition (hero video + title + body)
-`sidebar-active-state.png` — active lesson state in the sidebar
Two-column, non-collapsible layout. No hamburger toggle, no accordion on the sidebar, no hide/show. Sidebar is always visible on desktop.
#### Left sidebar (navigation)
- Grouped by the course's **sections** (existing `courseSection` / lesson-section concept).
- Each section renders:
- A small, muted section heading (e.g. "AI Foundations"). Plain text — not a button, not collapsible.
- A vertical list of that section's lessons and exercises, in their existing `order`.
- Each row contains:
- A **square number badge** on the left with the per-section index (1, 2, 3, …). Numbering resets at the start of each section and is shared across lessons + exercises (they interleave by `order`).
- The item title to the right of the badge.
- If the item's `isUnlocked === false`, a lock icon replaces the number badge or sits next to it (final placement: TBD with design).
- The active item (matching the current `itemSlug`) renders with:
- **Primary color** (the app's `--primary` token, *not* the hard-coded orange in the screenshots) filling the number badge background, white number text.
- **Primary color** title text.
- A subtle primary-colored vertical accent bar on the far left edge (outside the sidebar content area, aligned with the row).
- Hover state (non-active rows):
- Number badge gets a slightly darker muted fill.
- Title text gets a subtle color shift (muted-foreground → foreground).
- Cursor is pointer.
- No icons on normal rows, no progress rings, no status dots. Keep it text-first.
#### Right content column
Vertical order, top to bottom:
1.**Video** (if the item has one) — full-width within the content column, rounded corners, single centered play affordance. Omitted entirely if no video (no empty placeholder).
2.**Section label** — small, muted text above the title (the name of the section this item belongs to).
3.**Item title** — large, prominent heading.
4.**Body** — prose / rich text for lessons, or the rendered question UI for exercises. Readable line length, generous line-height.
5.**Callout** (see §7) — rendered as an inline card at the bottom of the body, only if the course has a callout configured.
If the item is **locked** (`isUnlocked = false`), the body and video are replaced by the callout card rendered in a larger, centered variant; steps 1–4 above are skipped.
No top banner, no hero image above the video, no breadcrumb. Minimal page chrome.
#### Responsive
**Desktop (≥ `lg`)**
- Two columns: sidebar fixed width on the left, content column fluid on the right.
- Sidebar is always visible (not collapsible).
- No bottom navigation bar.
**Mobile / tablet (< `lg`)**
- The left sidebar is **hidden**.
- A **fixed bottom navigation bar** is pinned to the viewport. It has three regions:
- **Left**: previous-item button (arrow-left icon). Navigates to the previous item in the flattened, section-ordered sequence. Disabled visually at the first item.
- **Center**: large tap target. Shows the current item's position (e.g. the per-section number badge + the item title, or "3 / 12"). Tapping opens a bottom sheet.
- **Right**: next-item button (arrow-right icon). Disabled visually at the last item.
- The bottom sheet (built on `@cio/ui/base/drawer` — vaul-based) slides up from the bottom and contains the **full sidebar tree**: every section with its heading and every numbered row. The sheet supports the native drag-to-dismiss gesture ("swiper from bottom up"). The current item is visually active in the sheet. Tapping a row navigates and auto-closes the sheet.
- The content column takes the full viewport width minus the bottom bar's height. The page adds bottom padding equal to the bar's height so the callout / body never sits under the bar.
- The bottom bar uses `--primary` for the center button's accent (matching the sidebar active state) and solid surface background with a top hairline border.
**Shared**
- "Prev / next sequence" is the flat `ORDER BY sections.order, items.order` across all items (lessons + exercises interleaved). Locked items are part of the sequence — tapping prev/next into a locked item still navigates; the locked state is then rendered in the content column as described in §6.
- Keyboard shortcuts on desktop: `←` / `→` also move through this sequence (nice-to-have, not required for v1 acceptance).
#### Colors
All accent colors in the sidebar must resolve to the app's **primary** color token (`--primary`), not the hard-coded orange visible in the reference screenshots. The screenshots are from Cursor Learn and are included purely as a layout reference.
### 7. Creator Callout (per-course setting)
Each public course has an optional **Callout** configured by the creator:
When `callout` is `null`, no callout is rendered anywhere (lesson still reads cleanly without it; locked items show a plain "This lesson is locked" state).
-`type` enum: add `'PUBLIC'`, change default to `'SELF_PACED'`.
- New column `callout JSONB NULL` (shape described in §7).
### `lesson` table
- New column `slug VARCHAR NULL`.
- Backfill existing rows with kebab-cased titles (collision-resolved per course).
- After backfill, `slug` becomes `NOT NULL` in a follow-up migration.
- Existing `public BOOLEAN` column is deprecated — not referenced in new code. Column is **not** dropped in this PRD (to keep the migration small).
### `exercise` table
- New column `slug VARCHAR NULL`, same treatment as `lesson.slug`.
### Slug uniqueness
- Enforced at the application layer: a slug is unique per-course across the union of `lesson.slug` and `exercise.slug`.
- A DB-level constraint is not added in v1 (would require a materialized view or a trigger across two tables); application code must check before insert/update.
The public course UI is built as a set of Storybook components and consumed by the `(org-site)` routes. Stories are the primary development + review surface — reviewers test desktop and mobile layouts in Storybook before the routes are wired up.