Missions & Badges

XP

XP is the single, transparent score behind levels, the leaderboard, AND certification eligibility - deliberately one number rather than two competing scores. Every award is logged as a real, itemized XpEntry row (amount, reason, createdAt) via awardXp() in services/xp-ledger.ts, so "why did I get this XP?" always has a real answer, visible on a contributor's /profile page under "XP history".

checkAndAwardActivityXp(userId) scans a contributor's synced GitHub activity (matched by Profile.githubUsername) and awards ongoing, uncapped XP for every unit of real activity not yet counted:

Each row is idempotent via a unique constraint on (userId, sourceType, sourceId), so re-syncing the same GitHub activity never double-awards XP. awardXp() is the only place XP is ever granted

• missions (below) call it too, for one-time milestone bonuses.

Missions

Missions are rows in the Mission table (slug, title, description, type, xpReward, optional badgeId) — never hardcoded in application code. MissionType is one of FIRST_PR, DOCUMENTATION, BUG_FIX, TESTING, CODE_REVIEW, COMMUNITY_SUPPORT.

checkAndCompleteMissions(userId) re-checks every active mission against the user's synced GitHub activity and auto-completes + rewards any newly-met one (also logged via awardXp()). It runs whenever a signed-in user visits /profile or /missions.

Badges

Badges are rows in the Badge table, awarded via awardBadge(userId, slug) — idempotent (won't double-award) and creates an in-app notification. See prisma/seed.ts for the seeded set (First PR, Top Reviewer, Bug Hunter, Documentation Hero, Community Helper, Mentor, Maintainer).

Certificates

issueCertificate() creates a Certificate row. Every certificate has:

• A public verification page at /certificates/[id]
• A downloadable PDF at /api/certificates/[id]/pdf, generated on the fly with pdf-lib, embedding a QR code (via the qrcode package) that links back to the verification page

Graduating a mentorship (graduateMentorship) automatically issues one.

Certification Programs

Program rows define certification tracks (Contributor, Developer, QA Engineer, Product Analyst, Maintainer), each with a primary minXp gate (the same XP described above) plus optional additional hard requirements (minMergedPRs, minIssuesOpened, minReviews) - clear, independently-verifiable counts rather than any track that would require guessing what a PR was "really about" (e.g. no Documentation/DevOps Specialist tracks, since a merged PR's real-world category can't be reliably inferred from labels alone). durationMonths is a "typical completion time" shown for guidance only - it never gates completion, so finishing the requirements early earns the certificate immediately (see getProgramProgress/checkAndCompletePrograms in services/programs.ts).

Programs with requiresApproval: true (currently just Maintainer) don't auto-issue: meeting the requirements instead moves the enrollment to PENDING_APPROVAL, and an administrator approves it from /admin/program-approvals (approveProgramCompletion), which issues the real certificate.