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Joining mode and life stage are context — not permanent tracks. Pick the path that fits you; the rest reads in any order.
Overview
What is Northa?
Northa is a purpose & direction operating system for experiential education. It helps students process real experiences, test possibilities safely, and leave programs with an evidence-backed Compass and concrete next steps — not just a certificate.
Traditional programs end with a handshake and a folder. Northa turns the whole program into a sequence of small, real Tries — each one captured as evidence, reflected on, and woven into a living direction statement called the Compass. When the program ends, students leave with a Chapter: an evidence-backed summary of what they learned, where their direction moved, and what to do next — plus a durable account they keep for life.
The Northa promise
Who it's for
Five roles, one platform
Northa serves the full experiential-education stack — from the student in the field to the institution running the program.
The learner
Student
Discovers direction, runs Tries, reflects, and builds an evidence-backed Compass they keep forever.
- •Daily Today feed
- •Explore & run experiments
- •Reflect & update Compass
- •Receive a Chapter on completion
Field staff
Facilitator
Runs the cohort day-to-day: unlocks moments, nudges students, and reads the room in real time.
- •Cohort home & run-of-show
- •Roster + live engagement
- •AI insights
- •Moment-by-moment pacing
Mentor
Advisor / Officer
Guides a caseload of students across one or more institutions — with student consent at every step.
- •Caseload progress charts
- •Wellbeing signals
- •Consent-gated notes
- •Nudge & message
School lead
Institution Admin
Owns the institution's programs, staff roles, reporting, and program studio.
- •Program launch wizard
- •Role grants & revocation
- •Era reporting
- •Experiment studio
Platform owner
System Admin
Governs the whole platform: institutions, policies, audit log, and entitlements.
- •Platform overview
- •Policy publishing
- •Audit log
- •Entitlements
Alone or in a cohort
Independent student
Not in a program? Northa still works as a personal studio for purpose discovery and Tries.
- •Solo onboarding
- •Personal experiment studio
- •Self-paced Compass
Role permission matrix
Who can do what. ✓ = yes, ◐ = consent-gated / scoped, — = no.
| Capability | Student | Facilitator | Advisor | Inst Admin | Sys Admin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View own evidence | ✓ | — | ◐ | — | ✓ |
| Run & reflect on Tries | ✓ | — | — | — | — |
| View cohort engagement | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Nudge / message students | — | ✓ | ✓ | — | — |
| View caseload signals | — | — | ✓ | — | — |
| Approve experiments | — | ✓ | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Launch / assign program | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Grant staff roles | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Publish platform policy | — | — | — | — | ✓ |
| Read audit log | — | — | — | ◐ | ✓ |
Core concepts
The vocabulary of Northa
A small set of nouns does almost all the work. Understand these and you understand the product.
Compass
Your living direction statement, built from evidence. It evolves as you run Tries and reflect — not a fixed goal, but a heading you keep calibrating.
Try (Experiment)
A small, real-world action with a hypothesis, action steps, a deliverable, and captured evidence. The atomic unit of learning in Northa.
Reflection
The moment a Try becomes evidence. You rate energy, meaning, fit, and decide your next move — repeat, remix, raise, or switch.
Moment
A scheduled beat in a program — a check-in, a Try, a reflection, a synthesis. Moments unlock on the program calendar and build toward a Chapter.
Chapter
Your evidence-backed completion summary when a program ends: what you tried, what you learned, where your direction moved, and your next-step plan.
Credential
A durable, verified record (the Compass + Chapter) tied to your personal account — survives even if your school email is revoked.
Getting started
Your first 30 minutes
Whether you're a student, a facilitator, or an admin, here's how to get moving.
STUDENT
Accept your invite
Open the invite link from your program, or sign up directly if you're independent.
Pick a track
College or pre-college. This shapes language, safety rules, and the experiment catalog.
Answer the discovery
12 guided questions produce your first Compass draft.
Run your first Try
Open Today, start the Next Up Try, and complete the reflection.
FACILITATOR
Claim your role
Use your staff invite to claim the facilitator role for your cohort.
Open the cohort home
See your roster, today's moment, and live engagement.
Nudge who needs it
Use AI insights to find stalled students and send a nudge.
INSTITUTION ADMIN
Sign in to your workspace
Your admin login opens the institution overview.
Launch a program
Use the launch wizard to assign a version to a cohort with dates and facilitators.
Grant staff roles
Assign facilitators and advisors, scoped to your institution.
Watch the era report
At completion, review the anonymized aggregate outcome report.
The student journey
From first spark to lasting direction
A student moves through a deliberate arc — arriving, naming a direction, testing it, and leaving with proof.
Arrive & orient
Welcome screen, track selection (college or pre-college), and account creation. Students joining a program authenticate with their invite; independent students sign up directly.
Name a starting direction
A guided purpose-discovery flow turns answers into a first Compass statement — impact-forward, career-forward, or values-forward. It's a draft, not a verdict.
Run Tries
Each day's Today feed surfaces a fitted next Try. Students run it, capture evidence (a deliverable, a door opened), and reflect.
Calibrate the Compass
Reflections feed back into the Compass as confirmed or rejected learnings — an evidence thread that shows exactly why the direction says what it says.
Complete the Chapter
At program end, Northa assembles a Chapter from the student's own evidence: moments completed, key learnings, direction evolution, and a 30-day next-step plan. The student curates which artifacts to include.
The Today feed
One screen, one next step
Students never face a blank slate. Today always shows the single most useful next move — and lets them pick up anything stale.
The feed adapts to state: a Next Up card for the fitted Try, a Pick up where you left offcard for any run left open, and a gentle weekly energy check-in. It's the daily home base — pull-to-refresh, haptic feedback, and a calm dark UI built mobile-first.
Under the hood, a single canonical dashboard endpoint fetches everything in one call — profile, active runs, insights, and program context — so the feed stays fast even on a slow connection.
AFTERNOON, KWAME
Test a Possibility
Running a real experiment
PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF
Ask an adult you know what their job is really like
Started 9 days ago
Tries & experiments
How a Try works
A Try is a complete loop: fitted recommendation → plan → run → evidence → reflection → next move. Every step is captured.
Explore — fitted recommendations
Explore recommends three Tries at a time, each with a fit score that explains why it fits your direction, budget, social style, and the week you're in. You pick one, set a personal intention, and run it.
The V2 contract
Every Try carries the full V2 contract: 3–7 action steps, an explicit deliverable ("By the end, you'll have…"), evidence-capture config, and a next-step choice (repeat / remix / raise / switch). Nothing is left to guesswork.
Try something
Fitted to your direction + week
Host a 20-min coffee chat
Fits your people-energy + low budget. A starter Try.
Shadow a lab for an afternoon
A growth Try — stretch your range.
Write a 1-page field note
ACTIVE TRY · GROWTH
Host a 20-min coffee chat
ACTION STEPS
DELIVERABLE
By the end, you'll have a Bridge Note — one quote + one next door.
College vs. pre-college tracks
| Dimension | College | Pre-college |
|---|---|---|
| Safety contract | Bounded by adult involvement | Full contract: level, boundary, audience, no-go rules |
| Doors opened | Required (resource / person / opportunity) | Optional |
| Difficulty levels | Starter → Stretch | Starter → Stretch (unlock-gated) |
| Sharing default | Student choice | Always private |
| Adult involvement | none | none / facilitator / parent_ok |
| Consent for media | Optional | Auto-required for recording or interviewing |
The Compass
Evidence, not aspiration
The Compass is a direction statement that earns every word. Underneath it runs an evidence thread you can audit.
"I help first-gen students find footing in unfamiliar places."
EVIDENCE THREAD
I come alive coaching peers
3 experiments · high energy
I drift when work is solo + screen-bound
2 experiments · low energy
The evidence thread
Each learning that shapes your Compass links back to the Tries and reflections that produced it. You can confirm a learning ("yes, this feels true") or reject it ("not quite"). Confirmed learnings reinforce future recommendations; rejected ones are revised or suppressed.
Versioned, auditable, yours
- Versioned — Your statement is saved as a new version each time you refine it — full history preserved.
- Auditable — Every claim cites the evidence behind it.
- Yours — You can export or share your Compass any time; it lives on your durable account.
Programs
How programs are built & run
Northa separates the template (what a program is) from the assignment (who runs it, when, and where) so institutions can scale without losing control.
Template
The reusable blueprint: stages, moments, resources, and measurement plan. Authored once in the Program Studio.
Version
A frozen, immutable snapshot of a template. Students always participate in a specific version — so mid-program edits never break an in-flight cohort.
Assignment
A version assigned to a cohort: start/end dates, timezone, facilitators, and institution overrides. This is what students actually join.
Membership
A student's enrollment in an assignment — carrying consent, lifecycle status (active → completing → completed), and progress.
The lifecycle, end to end
Template
Version
Assignment
Membership
Moments
Chapter
Era Report
Each transition is a server-side, consent-checked, audit-logged event — never a client-side mutation. Students always participate in a frozen version, so edits to a template can't change an in-flight cohort.
Staff workspaces
Workspaces built for the role
Each staff role gets a focused workspace — not a generic dashboard. The right data, the right actions, no more.
Facilitator
Runs the cohort day-to-day. A cohort home shows who's active, a run-of-show paces moments to the calendar, and AI insights surface who needs a nudge — all without exposing private reflections.
Advisor / Officer
Guides a caseload across institutions. Progress charts show experiment completion trends; wellbeing signals flag students who may need outreach. Access to a student's private reflections is always consent-gated and audit-logged.
Northa
Cohort Home
Run of Show
Roster
AI Insights
FACILITATOR
Future Builders · Cohort B
24
Enrolled
18
Active today
4.2
Avg moments
TODAY · MOMENT 5
Reflection check-in opens
18 of 24 students prompted
ADVISOR · CASELOAD
12 students · 3 institutions
Experiments completed (last 7 weeks)
Role lifecycle (audited)
Safety & consent
Bounded before it begins
Northa is built for minors and vulnerable contexts. Every pre-college Try carries an explicit safety contract, and every data touch is consent-checked.
Safety contract
Each pre-college Try declares a safety level, boundary (program- or home-contained), approved audience, adult involvement, and no-go rules — validated before activation.
Consent gates
Students acknowledge a versioned consent policy before joining. When a policy changes with re-consent required, members re-acknowledge before continuing.
Wellbeing signals
Reflection energy ratings feed anonymized wellbeing flags against admin-configured thresholds — surfacing students who may need outreach, without exposing private prose.
Private by default
A student's reflection text and breakthrough moments are never shown to staff — only aggregate signals — unless the student explicitly shares.
Data & privacy
Owned by the student, durable for life
Northa's data model is built around one principle: a student's evidence survives the program — and survives an institution revoking their email.
- Durable ownership — Every record carries an
owner_user_id— a stable user ID that survives email or SSO changes, so evidence stays linked to the person, not the school email. - Row-level security — Entity access is enforced server-side per role and per owner. A student sees only their own records; an officer sees only their consented caseload; an admin sees their institution.
- Recovery bridge — If a school email is revoked, students reclaim their account and all evidence through a recovery token — no data lost, no re-onboarding.
- Append-only audit — Consent changes, statement versions, role lifecycle, staff record access, and program review decisions are all written to an immutable audit log.
- Right to leave — Students can export or delete their data at any time. Program completion reporting uses anonymized era aggregates, not identifiable rows.
Privacy by cohort size
After a program ends
From cohort to personal
When your program membership completes, Northa doesn't shut the door. Your evidence, Compass, and account stay with you — but access, visibility, and staffing change. Here's exactly what happens.
Chapter review & curation
At completion, Northa assembles your Chapter from your own evidence: moments completed, key learnings, direction evolution, and a next-step plan. You can review it and curate which artifacts to include before finalizing. Curation is optional — the Chapter is generated whether or not you curate.
Verify your recovery email
Before the program ends, confirm a personal recovery email in Profile. This is the email that lets you reclaim your account and all your evidence if your school email is ever revoked. Verifying it is the single most important thing you can do to keep your Compass for life.
Recovery email ≠ changing your school login
What changes when membership completes
- Program moments stop unlocking — Your cohort's calendar has ended — new program moments no longer appear.
- Staff access scales down — Facilitators and advisors keep only the access their role and your consent allow for completed records; live engagement views close. Any access is audit-logged.
- Your institution may revoke your email — When that happens, sign in with your recovery email to reclaim everything.
What stays in Today, Try, and Compass
- Today — Keeps showing a fitted next Try and your weekly check-in — now from the personal catalog, not the program.
- Try — Your full library and personal experiment studio remain available. You can keep running Tries independently.
- Compass — Your direction statement, evidence thread, and version history are permanent. Keep refining them.
Export, deletion & help
You can export your data or delete your account from Profile at any time — even after the program ends and even if your school email is gone. If you can no longer sign in, use the recovery flow at /recover or contact support.
Staff access after completion
FAQ
Common questions
Do students need to be in a program to use Northa?+
No. Independent students can sign up directly and use the personal studio for purpose discovery and self-paced Tries. Programs add structure, facilitation, and a Chapter on completion.
What happens to a student's data when a program ends?+
Their evidence stays on their durable account, linked by owner_user_id. They keep their Compass, Chapter, and credentials for life — and can reclaim access even if their school email is revoked.
Can staff see what students write in reflections?+
No. Reflection text and breakthrough moments are private by default. Staff see only aggregate signals (energy, meaning, fit ratings) and consent-gated notes. Any access to a student's record is audit-logged.
How are pre-college activities kept safe?+
Every pre-college Try carries an explicit safety contract — safety level, boundary, approved audience, adult involvement, and no-go rules — validated server-side before activation. Recording or interviewing auto-requires consent.
Can an institution customize a program?+
Yes. The Program Studio lets admins author templates and freeze versions. An assignment can carry institution-specific overrides to moment content or scheduling without touching the canonical template.
Is Northa accessible?+
Northa targets WCAG 2.1 AA: 44px touch targets on mobile, keyboard focus traps in overlays, text alternatives for every chart, and a respects-reduced-motion gate on all animations.
Account & troubleshooting
Access, recovery, and your data
The practical side of owning your Northa account — how to get back in, get your data out, and get help.
Recovering access
If you can still sign in with your school email, just log in normally. If your school email has been revoked, use /recover with the personal recovery email you verified in Profile. Your Compass, Chapter, and all evidence are linked to your stable account — not the email — so recovery loses nothing.
Recovery email is not your login
Exporting your data
You can export your Compass, reflections, and experiment history from Profile. If an in-app export isn't available for a specific record type, contact support and we'll prepare it for you. Exports contain your own content — not other students' data.
Deleting your data
You can delete your account from Profile at any time. This removes the records you authored — your reflections, runs, and purpose statements. A few anonymized aggregate counts may be retained for completed-program reporting; they carry no name or identifying detail. Deletion is permanent and completed within 30 days.
Offline behavior
Northa runs in your browser and caches recently-viewed screens, so you can often read your Today or Compass offline. Saving a reflection, starting a Try, or updating your Compass needs a connection to persist. Nothing is lost if you go offline mid-action — it waits and syncs when you're back.
AI output is guidance, not a verdict
Northa uses AI to draft purpose-statement options and surface patterns from your evidence. That output is editable guidance — you can accept, edit, or reject any of it. It is not an assessment, a grade, or a decision made about you. Your reflection text is processed to generate your output; see the Privacy Policy for details.
Small-cohort privacy
Completed-program reporting uses anonymized aggregates. Below a minimum cohort size, identifying distributions are suppressed — so a graduating class of one or two can't be re-identified from a report.
Getting help
For account help, program questions, or privacy requests, contact northa.purpose@gmail.com. If your school access has already ended, the recovery flow and support email both work without it.
Reference
Glossary
The terms you'll meet throughout Northa, in one place.
- Compass
- A student's living direction statement, built and calibrated from reflected-upon evidence.
- Try (Experiment)
- A small, real-world action with a hypothesis, action steps, a deliverable, and captured evidence.
- Reflection
- The structured post-Try capture: energy, meaning, fit ratings + a next-step decision. Private by default.
- Moment
- A scheduled beat in a program (check-in, Try, reflection, synthesis) that unlocks on the calendar.
- Chapter
- The evidence-backed completion summary assembled when a student's program membership ends.
- Credential
- A durable, verified record (Compass + Chapter) tied to a personal account that survives email revocation.
- Era Report
- An anonymized, immutable aggregate of a completed cohort — used for post-program reporting without exposing identities.
- owner_user_id
- The stable user ID stamped on every student-owned record so evidence survives email/SSO changes.
- Consent policy
- A versioned, published policy a student acknowledges before joining; re-consent is required when it changes.
- Safety contract
- The pre-college guardrails on every Try: safety level, boundary, approved audience, adult involvement, no-go rules.
- Program version
- A frozen, immutable snapshot of a template; students always participate in a specific version.
- RLS
- Row-level security — server-side rules that gate who can create/read/update/delete each entity's records.
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