lab-nexus

Problem

A hardware lab loses track of equipment the moment the spreadsheet has two editors. What matters is not the list but the history: who has it, where it went, when it is due and what happened to it last term.

Approach

A Next.js inventory application with Prisma on the Node runtime, and three roles enforced in the server actions and API routes themselves rather than in middleware. Assets split into units so a box of ten can be checked out one at a time, deletion is always soft so the audit trail survives it, and every mutation writes a record against the asset.

Outcome

• Role-aware throughout: students, researchers and admins see different dashboards and can perform different mutations.
• Checkout requires a specific unit when units exist, which is what makes the trail answer where a given item actually is.
• Filtering, search and column selection preserve state in the query string, so a filtered view is a shareable link.
• Ships with a Dockerfile and a delivered against backlog roadmap checked in beside the code.