project-proposal-2025

StartX: Your Friendly Software Setup Guide

Abstract

Have you ever been excited to try new software, maybe for coding or design, but got stuck just trying to install it? Instructions can be confusing, strange errors pop up, and technical terms like ‘PATH variables’ don’t make sense. StartX wants to make this easier! It will be a helpful website with super simple, step-by-step picture guides showing you exactly how to install important software tools. Think of it as a patient friend guiding you. This project focuses on building the first version focusing on core software. For StartX to succeed long-term, we need to focus on three main things right from the start: 1. Being Reliable (making sure our guides are correct through careful validation), 2. Being Maintainable (using smart, AI-assisted approaches to make updating guides efficient), and 3. Being Extensible (building the site so we can add more guides and features step-by-step later). Our goal is to help anyone get started with new tools without the usual headache, backed by a trustworthy process.

Author

Name: Daksh Jain

Student number: 48246396

Functionality (The Big Dream for StartX - Growing Smartly)

Our first step (this project) focuses on getting basic software installed correctly. But the big dream is for StartX to grow, step-by-step through future updates, into a much richer learning companion, built on a foundation of trust and smart maintenance:

Imagine StartX eventually offering:

• Guides for Many More Tools: Expanding beyond the first few to cover a wider range of software developers and technical folks use daily.
• Not Just How, but Why: Going deeper than just installation. StartX could explain important background concepts simply – fostering true understanding.
• Smart Setup Advice: Helping you configure tools after installation, explaining why specific setups are recommended for different tasks (e.g., VS Code for web dev vs. data science).
• Learning to Do It Yourself: Providing clear guides on how to achieve similar results manually, empowering users.
• AI-Assisted Content Updates: Crucially, to keep guides reliable at scale, StartX envisions using smart tools (AI) to help monitor for software updates and draft initial changes to guides.
• Human Validation is Key: Absolutely essential: Any AI-generated draft update would always be meticulously reviewed, tested, corrected, and approved by human experts before publishing. This ensures accuracy, clarity, and maintains the core promise of reliability. AI assists efficiency; humans guarantee quality.
• Better Problem Solving: Developing more detailed troubleshooting sections, perhaps using insights gained from user feedback or AI analysis of common issues (always human-verified).
• Covering More Ground: Gradually adding support for different operating systems or specific versions of tools.

Scope (What We Will Actually Build This Semester - Step 1: The Foundation)

To build that strong foundation, this very first version (our “Minimum Viable Product” or MVP) will be small and focused only on software setup, built manually for quality:

1. A Simple Website: A basic website you can visit to read the guides.
2. Guides for 3 Key Tools: Easy-to-follow written steps with pictures for installing:
   • Visual Studio Code (a popular code editor)
   • Python (a popular programming language)
   • Git (a tool for tracking code changes)
3. For Windows & Mac: Guides made specifically for computers running:
   • Windows 11
   • macOS Sonoma
4. Explaining ‘PATH’: A simple explanation of the PATH setting on computers – what it does and why it matters for using Python and Git easily.
5. Fixing Common Problems: A short list of the top 2 or 3 most common mistakes or errors people run into when installing each of these tools, with simple ways to fix them.
6. Simple Guide Format: The guides will be stored in a simple way (like basic text files called Markdown) that makes them easy for us to change later – important for future updates!

What This First Version Won’t Have:

• No guides for Linux computers yet.
• No guides for other software besides VS Code, Python, and Git.
• No AI assistance features implemented yet (this is part of the future vision/strategy).
• No way to log in or save your progress.
• Only guides for the newest versions of the tools.
• The website won’t install things for you – you’ll follow the steps.

Quality Attributes (The Important Goals for Building StartX Well - Using Smart Strategy)

To make sure StartX is built well, especially for long-term growth, we focus on these technical goals, keeping our future strategy in mind:

1. Reliability (Making Sure the Guides are Right - Human Guaranteed)

• What this means: The instructions have to be correct and easy to understand. Users must be able to trust the guides completely.
• Why it’s important: This is non-negotiable. Wrong guides are harmful. Even with future AI assistance in drafting, the final human validation step is what guarantees reliability and builds user trust.
• How we’ll check (MVP): We’ll have people try the (manually created) MVP guides on fresh computers and see if they succeed almost all the time (goal > 95%).

2. Maintainability (Making Updates Efficient - AI-Assisted, Human-Approved)

• What this means: Software changes constantly. Maintainability means we need an efficient process to keep guides updated. The plan involves using simple formats now, and strategically incorporating AI-assistance later to help detect changes and draft updates quickly.
• Why it’s important: Manual monitoring and updating for many guides is slow and expensive. Our AI-assist strategy aims to make this scalable, freeing up human time to focus on the crucial validation and quality improvement, ensuring guides stay fresh.
• How we’ll check (MVP): We’ll time ourselves manually updating an MVP guide for a small change. It should be fast (goal < 2 hours), proving the underlying content format is manageable, ready for future enhancements.

3. Extensibility (Making it Easy to Add More Guides & Features)

• What this means: The website structure should easily allow adding new guides (for software or future features like configuration advice) without major code rewrites.
• Why it’s important: This supports the step-by-step growth vision and the integration of future tools (like the AI-assist components or new content types).
• How we’ll check (MVP): We’ll try adding a guide for a new, simple tool. Most work should be content creation, validating the flexibility of the initial architecture.

Evaluation (How We’ll Test Our Work for Step 1)

To make sure we’ve successfully built this first step and achieved our initial goals, here’s how we plan to test the MVP:

Testing Reliability (Do the guides work?)

• How: We’ll ask students (especially beginners) to test the guides on clean Windows 11 / macOS Sonoma environments. They’ll try to install VS Code, Python, or Git using only the StartX guide.
• What we’ll look at: Did they succeed? Did error fixes work? Was the guide clear (via survey)?
• Our goal: >95% success rate. Error fixes work well. Positive feedback on clarity.

Testing Maintainability (Can we update guides easily?)

• How: We’ll simulate updating a guide for a small software change, performing the update manually for the MVP.
• What we’ll look at: How long did the manual update take?
• Our goal: Manual update is quick (< 2 hours), confirming the content format is suitable for the future AI-assisted workflow.

Testing Extensibility (Can we add new guides easily?)

• How: We’ll document and test the process of adding a guide for a new simple tool .
• What we’ll look at: Was the effort mostly content creation vs. core code changes?
• Our goal: Adding the guide is mostly content work, showing the architecture is ready for expansion.

Technology We Plan to Use (The tools we’ll use to build it)

We plan to build the website using Python and the Flask framework. Guides will use Markdown files. The frontend will use standard HTML, CSS, and minimal JavaScript.