SkillTree

SkillTree runs as a Spring Boot service behind nginx, with PostgreSQL alongside it. Confirm that all three services are active and check the listeners:

sudo systemctl is-active postgresql skilltree nginx java -version sudo ss -tlnp | grep -E ':80 |:8080 '

On the first boot of your VM, a one-shot service generates the administrator password, the PostgreSQL password and the JWT signing keystore, all unique to that VM. It writes the administrator credentials to a root-only file.

The image itself ships with no database and no account of any kind, so there is no default login to change. Run the following to read the credentials file with the password masked:

sudo sed -E 's/(SKILLTREE_ADMIN_PASSWORD=).*/\1**** unique per VM ****/' /root/skilltree-credentials.txt
sudo ls -l /etc/skilltree/application.properties /var/lib/skilltree/jwtkeys.jks

The password is different on every VM. To read the real password, run:

sudo grep SKILLTREE_ADMIN_PASSWORD /root/skilltree-credentials.txt

nginx serves an unauthenticated health probe, and SkillTree serves the public bootstrap configuration that the dashboard uses. Call both:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'healthz %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/healthz
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'public config %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/public/config

Browse to http://<your-vm-ip>/ and sign in with the administrator address admin@skilltree.local and the password from Step 5.

You can also verify the sign-in from the command line. The following performs a real form login, keeps the session cookie, and then uses that cookie to call an authenticated endpoint.

JAR=$(mktemp)
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'login %{http_code}\n' -c "$JAR" \
  -X POST http://127.0.0.1/performLogin \
  --data-urlencode 'username=<SKILLTREE_USER>' \
  --data-urlencode 'password=<SKILLTREE_PASSWORD>'
curl -s -b "$JAR" http://127.0.0.1/app/userInfo | cut -c1-120; echo rm -f "$JAR"

A project is one gamified training profile. Create one from the dashboard with the Project button, or over the REST API as shown below.

JAR=$(mktemp)
curl -s -o /dev/null -c "$JAR" -X POST http://127.0.0.1/performLogin \
  --data-urlencode 'username=<SKILLTREE_USER>' \
  --data-urlencode 'password=<SKILLTREE_PASSWORD>'
XSRF=$(awk '$6=="XSRF-TOKEN"{print $7}' "$JAR")
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'create project %{http_code}\n' -b "$JAR" \
  -H "X-XSRF-TOKEN: $XSRF" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -X POST http://127.0.0.1/app/projects/onboarding \
  --data '{"projectId":"onboarding","name":"New Starter Onboarding"}'
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'pin project %{http_code}\n' -b "$JAR" \
  -H "X-XSRF-TOKEN: $XSRF" -X POST http://127.0.0.1/root/pin/onboarding rm -f "$JAR"

Do not skip the pin step. Your administrator is a SkillTree root user, and a root user's Projects page lists only the projects they have pinned. A newly created project does not appear until you pin it. You can also pin an existing project from the dashboard with the Pin button.

Subjects group skills inside a project, and skills are what your application reports against. Each skill defines how many points it awards and how many times it must be performed.

Open a subject to manage its skills. SkillTree keeps the running point total for the subject and the project as you add skills.

Your application tells SkillTree that a user did something, and points, levels and badges follow automatically. Reporting uses a project token, which you create on the project's Access page. To check what the project holds, query the database:

sudo -u postgres psql -d skilltree -tAc \
  "select project_id, name, total_points from project_definition order by project_id"
sudo -u postgres psql -d skilltree -tAc "select count(*) from skill_definition"