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Challenge 2: From Prototype to Product

Recap:

In Challenge 1, you built a prototype entirely by talking to an AI chat tool. It looked great: polished, interactive, with the features you designed. But the data was likely hardcoded, and the whole thing lived inside a chat window.

Then in Lesson 2, everything changed. You moved into a real development environment with an AI coding assistant that can read and edit your project's files. You migrated your prototype from chat into the project. It's real now, viewable in a browser, saved and synced. You learned that your code is just files, that version history means you can always undo, and that file access unlocks things chat never could: real data, multiple pages, targeted edits, and team collaboration.

You also did two things that set you up for right now:

  • You wrote user stories during the "Imagine the Upgrade" activity: features that weren't possible in chat but are now possible with file access. Those stories are your starting point.
  • You audited what's real vs. what's hardcoded in your prototype. That audit is your roadmap.

The Challenge

Turn your Safety Brief from a prototype into a product. The big unlock: real data.

Your project's repository comes pre-seeded with real NPS park alerts, weather forecasts, and streamflow readings for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Real park alerts from the National Park Service. Real weather forecasts from the National Weather Service. Real streamflow readings from USGS stream gauges at key river crossings. Your AI coding assistant should be able to find this data and figure out how to use it on its own. If it seems like it's having trouble, you can point it in the right direction: the data lives in the data/beginner/ directory.

The moment hardcoded text becomes real conditions is the moment this stops being a demo and starts being something someone could actually use. That's what you're building toward.

As you go, keep building incrementally, one piece at a time, verified before you move on.

What to Build

Items are listed in priority order. If time is tight, focus on the items near the top first.

  • The Safety Brief displays the current NPS alert status for your Yellowstone routes, pulled from pre-seeded data (or today's live data if your team connects to the real APIs), not hardcoded text
  • Weather conditions are real: temperature, wind, and forecast from National Weather Service data
  • The Safety Brief has multiple pages or sections with navigation between them (alerts, weather, river crossings, gear, whatever makes sense for your brief)
  • All changes are saved and synced: your work persists and your whole team can see it

These are options for teams that finish the baseline capabilities. Your team can also define your own stretch goals based on what interests you.

  • Add streamflow data: real-time river levels from USGS gauges at key Yellowstone crossing points
  • Make the Safety Brief adapt to conditions: show different guidance for different alert levels (what to do when a Danger alert is active vs. a Caution)
  • Build a route planning page that combines alerts, weather, and river conditions into one view
  • Create a printable trip briefing: a summary someone could screenshot or print for offline use before heading into the backcountry
  • Add visual data displays: a chart of streamflow trends over the past week, a color-coded alert summary, or a weather forecast timeline

Tips

  • Start with the user stories you wrote during Lesson 2. You already planned this. Pick the one with the biggest impact and implement it first.
  • Use the "What's Real, What's Fake?" audit as your checklist. Each hardcoded item you replace with real data is a clear win. Tackle them one at a time.
  • Ask your AI coding assistant what data is available. Try something like: "What NPS alert, weather, and streamflow data do we have in this project? Show me what's there and what I could use it for." Then follow up: "Show me an example of what the NPS alert data looks like. What fields are there and what do the values mean?" The more you understand the data before building with it, the better your user stories will be. This is the Explore step of your workflow, applied to data, not just user needs.
  • Save and sync regularly. This is your safety net. If something breaks, you can always go back.