Study-room finder for ANU libraries

A shared study-space finder for the Menzies, Hancock, Chifley and Law libraries (81 spaces, all bookable 24/7). Book a one-hour slot; a booker can offer spare seats on a shareable booking and others can join. The problem it targets: a room booked for four is often used by one, and nobody else can tell or ask.

Status: all three tiers are built. You can browse real availability, book a one-hour slot and cancel it. Bookings are checked on the server (clashes, daily limits, the 14-day window, no past bookings) and stored in SQLite. A booker of a space with 2+ seats can offer spare seats, choosing how many they use and whether their name is shown (private by default, so others see “A student”). Others join directly and can leave; joins never count toward the daily limit, can’t overlap your own bookings, and can’t exceed capacity. “Open seats now” lists shared bookings with room across all libraries.

Tier 3: a joiner can check in, and the details panel shows “N joined · M checked in” live. Instead of joining, someone can ask the booker; the booker accepts (which joins them) or declines from the inbox, and can switch requests off per booking (pending ones are declined). My bookings lists requests still waiting for an answer, and the Check in button appears only once check-in is open. The inbox holds in-app notifications (requests and answers, joins, leaves, check-ins, a joined booking being cancelled) with a live unread badge. A requester never learns a private booker’s name, and messages never carry it. Changes and inbox pings arrive over server-sent events, which never carry who booked or whose inbox changed: a client asks /api/unread for its own count. Shared bookings carry a static “seats aren’t guaranteed” note.

What good looks like here

Honest about ANU rules. Rooms and capacities come only from docs/FACTSHEET.md. Every booking is one hour on the hour; limits are per person per Canberra day (rooms, the Deck and booths share a pool of 2; desks 3). They live in one table (src/lib/rules.ts).
Honest about sharing. Shared seats carry a static “seats aren’t guaranteed” note. There are no timers or auto-release.
Private by default. A booker’s name is hidden unless they choose to show it.
Calm, accessible UI. One “Find a space” page with a List and Timetable view, checked at 390x844 and 1280x800, light and dark, with status never shown by colour alone.

Enforced by spec/ and CLAUDE.md: route and accessibility invariants. Judgement calls: the visual design and the shared-pool assumption for booths.

Demo assumptions

Booths share the room pool of 2 per day (only study rooms and the Deck were stated explicitly).
The accessibility computer and microfilm scanner follow the general 2-per-day rule.
Check-in opens 15 minutes before the hour and closes when it ends (CHECKIN_EARLY_MINUTES in src/lib/rules.ts); the fact sheet says nothing about it.
Only joiners check in (the booker is assumed present), and check-in has no consequence: nothing is released automatically.

Cut

Cut from Tier 3: marking single messages read (only “mark all as read”).

Also cut from the whole app: email and push, real SSO, maps, recurring bookings, admin tools, timers and auto-release of unclaimed seats.