Quickstart

Get a working iSchool instance running locally in under 10 minutes using the dev Docker Compose stack. This is for trying iSchool out — see Installation for a real deployment.

You need Docker and Docker Compose installed. Nothing else.

Clone and configure

git clone <your-repo-url> ischool
cd ischool
cp .env.example .env

The dev stack works out of the box with no keys filled in — email, SMS, WhatsApp, AI and vision features will simply report “not configured” until you add real keys (see Getting Your API Keys).

Start the stack

docker compose up --build

This brings up, in order: Postgres, migrations, permission/ontology seeding, the dev platform-admin account, the AI timetabling sidecar, Gotenberg (PDF rendering), the API, a demo school (auto-created), and the web dashboard.

Once docker compose up settles (the devboot step prints a confirmation), open http://localhost:3000/login:

Email:    admin@demo.school
Password: Admin1234!

What you get

A fully seeded demo school with the Administrator role and every module’s base permissions, ready to explore. From here:

Walk through Platform Navigation to understand the dashboard.
Read Modules for what each part of the system does.
Read Features for the parts that make iSchool more than a records system — the AI assistant, facial attendance, OCR scoresheet scanning.

Resetting

docker compose down -v

-v drops the Postgres volume, so the next up --build starts from a clean database again.

Introduction Installation