मुख्य सामग्रीमा जाने

3 min readdev-series

श्रमदान App Development Series

A YouTube series documenting the construction of this very app — in public, in real time.

What it is

Every meaningful piece of work on श्रमदान — features shipped, design decisions made, bugs fixed, architecture chosen — gets covered as a video episode. The series lives on YouTube as a playlist.

This is not a marketing channel. It is a build journal in video form, made by the same hands building the app, intended for:

  1. Anyone who wants to build a community-tech platform in Nepal or elsewhere — the series is a working tutorial. Copy the model, adapt the code, build something for your own community.
  2. Contributors to श्रमदान — episodes serve as onboarding context for new developers, designers, translators, and other shramdan members.
  3. Citizens curious about how the platform works — full transparency, all the way down. Nothing is held behind closed doors.

Why it exists

श्रमदान is itself a श्रमदान. Developer time donated. Designer hours donated. Translator effort donated. The series documents that labor so the donations are visible — both to honor the people doing the work and to make the model copyable.

It also feeds sustenance (./philosophy.md lane 3): the YouTube channel's monetization (ads, channel memberships, Super Chat) becomes a small inflow that funds platform hosting and other ongoing costs. Educational content paying for the platform that is being built — the loop closes nicely.

What you'll see in an episode

  • A specific commit / feature / decision being walked through
  • Real code, real terminal sessions, real design tools
  • Honest reflection on what went well + what got cut
  • Reference links to the affected files in the repo
  • Occasionally: AI collaboration moments — श्रमेश (the AI shramdan member) suggesting an approach, the developer pushing back, both arriving at something better

The aim is honest fidelity, not polished demo magic.

Where to watch

The episode list is embedded on the homepage under "Resources" (the YouTube playlist card). Direct link: see the playlist embed on the public site.

A dedicated /dev-series page is planned (Phase 18 follow-up) — until then, the resources section + this doc is the entry point.

How to contribute episodes

If you have built or are about to build something inside the platform — a frontend feature, a backend integration, a docs sweep, a design pass — recording an episode about it is a contribution to the dev series.

  • Keep episodes under 30 minutes; chapters help
  • Show the actual screen — code, browser, tools
  • Audio matters more than video quality
  • Caption track in EN; NE caption track is a follow-up contribution

The Livestreamer Shramdan role (see ../product/roles.md) overlaps with this; field event coverage and dev session coverage are two surfaces of the same role.

Tutorial dimension — for builders elsewhere

If you are building a similar community-tech platform — for your own city, for a different cause, for a different country — the series is yours to use. Treat each episode as a free chapter of an open textbook.

The architecture choices documented in the series are load-bearing:

  • Next.js + Ant Design + Tailwind stack — bilingual EN/NE-ready out of the box
  • Build-in-public ethos — the roadmap and polish backlog are open, the dev process is filmed
  • Movement-first, organization-second posture — no NGO, no for-profit subsidiary, no closed-door governance
  • AI as teammate — श्रमेश is treated as a member with a documented character, not a tool

Adapt freely. Fork the model. We genuinely want more communities to do this.

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