Project review: what was asked for, and what was actually built.
UCan is no longer a website with a database behind it. It is a working livelihood operating system — assessment, matching, learning, land, field capture, identity, traceability and audited impact reporting — live, verified and documented. This page is the honest, complete account of the engagement.
Scope versus delivered
Every row below is live in production today. Rows marked beyond scope were built on top of the original agreement.
Member journey
Beyond scopeA sign-up flow and a dashboard.
Sign-up with email, magic link, password reset and Google, a five-step welcome wizard, a rung-aware dashboard with personalised priority cards, progressive gating so nobody skips ahead, and an achievements and journey tracker.
Assessment
Beyond scopePoverty Stoplight capture.
Full Stoplight wizard across 10 areas plus the extended 50-indicator set, the Four S's stage engine (Struggle → Stable → Successful → Significant), and a DISC personality and passions quiz with picture-based scoring feeding role and ladder recommendations.
Opportunity matching
Beyond scopeA list of opportunities.
UCan Match swipe discovery, 354 micro-franchise concept cards, 33 enterprise ladders, a crop library, playbooks, learn paths with lessons, and a Start Here slider of affordable entry opportunities on the public homepage.
Mapping
Beyond scopeShow farms on a map.
A deliberate Hub → Farm/Business → Plot → Crop-zone hierarchy on satellite imagery, address / place / GPS search, auto-locate, drawn field boundaries, member badges, a ~45-site national network directory with one-click adoption, and an admin War Room command view with unified field-to-board mapping.
Field tooling
Beyond scopeNot in original scope.
The Buyback Tool — a PIN-gated public capture tool with camera, GPS, timestamp, a 225-item price list and automatic nearest-hub selection, deep-linked from map hub pins.
Identity & traceability
Beyond scopeA profile page.
UCan Passport to Prosperity: a public, QR-linked digital identity aggregating journey rung, 4S stage, scores, learning, enterprises, achievements and verified certificates, with scan logging and owner-side analytics, plus produce-level grower traceability QRs for packaging.
Impact reporting
Beyond scopeNot in original scope.
The ESG Social Foundation Contribution module — Poverty Stoplight mapped onto Doughnut Economics' 12 dimensions, per-hub scoping, privacy suppression, snapshots, CSV and Excel exports with live formulas, and a public methodology page.
AI & voice
Beyond scopeNot in original scope.
A grounded UCAN AI agent with a full site index and the signed-in user's own snapshot, an Azure voice-live agent, Azure text-to-speech on every tutorial, and green-screen presenter briefings on the key modules.
Guidance
Beyond scopeBasic help text.
A compulsory no-skip walkthrough with dwell timers, per-section user and admin tutorials with audio, an admin briefing gate, and a 34-screen visual walkthrough usable as training material.
Access control
Beyond scopeAdmin and user.
40+ ecosystem role types in five groups, held in a separate user_roles table and checked through a security-definer function — no privilege-escalation surface.
Executive command centre
Beyond scopeNot in original scope.
War Room extended into a live executive mothership: 30-day pulse & trends, alerts & decisions, auto-generated executive briefing with PDF/CSV board-pack export, and an Admin actions tab for member role assignment, application review and farmer status management.
The platform in five pillars
Member experience
From the first tap to a verified livelihood. Sign-up, welcome wizard, assessment, personalised next actions, matching, learning, and an identity a person genuinely owns. Nothing is skippable that shouldn't be, and nothing is locked that the member has earned.
Enterprise pathways
The economics of the model are in the product, not a PDF. 33 enterprise ladders, 354 micro-franchise cards, crop specs, pack-shed tiers and the four-tier ladder from Beginning Pack to Boza are all navigable, searchable and linked to real off-take routes.
Field operations & command centre
Built for a phone in a field and a laptop in the boardroom. Hub-first mapping, drawn boundaries, PIN-gated buyback capture with camera and GPS, offline-ready PWA behaviour and hub-aware records reconcile back to a location, while the War Room gives owners live pulse, alerts, executive briefings and admin actions in one view.
Capital & impact
The evidence layer funders ask for. An auditable ESG Social Foundation Contribution figure derived from real household data, investor intelligence, SASSA social-impact-bond framing, partner pipelines and a published methodology.
Trust & traceability
A QR on a punnet resolves to a verified grower; a QR on a card resolves to a verified person. Scans are logged, sensitive fields are never exposed, and unknown identifiers fail safe.
Engineering quality
Security posture
- Row-level security with explicit grants on every public table.
- Roles isolated in user_roles and checked through a security-definer has_role() function.
- Server functions authenticate through middleware; privileged paths verify role before elevating.
- 24+ scanner and review findings closed, including function search paths, self-insert loopholes and quiz-answer exposure.
- Public QR lookups run through a narrow RPC that returns only safe columns.
Reliability
- 53 of 53 routes verified in a real browser with zero JavaScript runtime errors.
- Graceful not-found handling on public identity routes instead of server errors.
- Server-side rendering throughout, with browser-only libraries loaded after hydration.
- Live data refresh on operational views; no stale command views in the field.
Maintainability
- Typed end to end: schema types generated, server functions validated with Zod.
- Content and knowledge held in versioned data modules, not hard-coded into screens.
- Shared components for tutorials, briefings, listen-aloud audio and presenter videos.
- Semantic design tokens throughout, so theming and rebrands are a one-file change.
Accessibility & reach
- Listen-aloud audio on every tutorial for low-literacy and on-the-move users.
- Mobile-hardened dialogs and wizards with no horizontal offset.
- Installable PWA with offline-ready behaviour.
- Plain-language copy in the client's voice throughout.
Handover pack
Documentation is not a separate deliverable sitting in a folder — it is published inside the product and stays current with it.
Route-by-route screenshots, statuses and end-to-end flow results from the latest verification run.
/test-reportModule-by-module status with depth notes and the forward roadmap.
/build-status34 captured screens in eight chapters with what-it-is and how-to-use notes — usable as staff training.
/walkthroughThe published Doughnut × Poverty Stoplight method behind the SFC figure.
/esg-methodologyShared vocabulary for the ecosystem: 4S, 4M, EPO, ladders, passport and more.
/glossaryWhere it goes next
Field-tool polish
Refinements to buyback capture, map flows and offline behaviour driven by live field feedback.
Field pilots
First township and peri-urban hub pilots with a live SASSA cohort.
Match marketplace
Verified off-taker and buyer matching with escrow milestones.
Certificates
NQF-aligned certificate issuance and employer verification.
Ubuntu Neighbourhoods
Geo-clustered producer groups with shared resources and pooled logistics.
Everything on this page is verifiable in one click.
53 routes, screenshotted and status-checked in a real browser on the latest run (2026-08-18), with end-to-end flows driven by real clicks and typed input.