Proposal: Dynamic Course Phase Registration

[Mtze]

1. Dynamic Registration of Course Phases

To enhance flexibility in course design, PROMPT should support dynamic registration of course phases. Administrators must be able to define and register new phases directly via the UI. A formal authorization process must be introduced to ensure the integrity of the system—any new phase must be reviewed and approved by a PROMPT system administrator before it becomes available for use in a course.

2. Versioning and Compatibility Handling

Robust version management is essential. Each phase should be versioned meaningfully to allow for precise control over upgrades and downgrades. The architecture needs to support:

• Version checks during deployment and registration.
• Prevention of incompatible upgrades/downgrades (e.g., blocking downgrades or upgrades unless explicitly allowed).
• Compatibility verification between the PROMPT core and external phases. For instance, if the core system introduces breaking API changes, old phase versions must either gracefully fail or provide migration paths.

This includes implementing a mechanism for phase-core compatibility checks before activation.

3. Security and Data Access Control

Given that phases may need access to data produced by earlier phases, a strong security model must be in place:

• Access control policies must clearly define what data each phase can read or write.
• Separation of privileges must be enforced to prevent unauthorized data access, especially when a phase performs automated tasks or accesses remote data sources without explicit user action.
• Scenarios involving background data access must be carefully designed to respect user permissions and system boundaries.

4. Deployment and Helm Chart Strategy

To streamline adoption and encourage modular development, a dedicated Helm chart for PROMPT should be created. This chart must:

• Provide a reliable and reproducible deployment strategy for PROMPT itself.
• Offer clear best practices for deploying external phases independently.
• Enable isolated deployment of phases, ensuring they can be updated or rolled back without affecting the core system or other phases.

[rappm]

Related Issues

[rappm]

#192

[rappm]

#661