metatron-odoo-erpforschools/CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md — Track O: School ERP on Odoo 19 Community

Master build spec for Claude Code. Read this fully before writing any code.

Also read, once, before starting:

• ../shared/DOMAIN_MODEL.md — entities and naming. Frozen. Do not deviate.
• ../shared/DEMO_SCRIPT.md — the eight scenes. This is the definition of done.
• ../IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md §2 for workstream order.

Never read or modify anything under ../Development/. That is the Frappe track, a separate product. Its conventions do not apply here and its code must not be referenced.

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1. Non-negotiable constraints

1. Odoo 19.0 Community only. No Enterprise module may appear in any dependency list, ever. If a feature seems to need one, it is out of scope or built from scratch — flag it, do not silently add the dependency. Verified absent from Community: hr_payroll, account_accountant, account_reports, whatsapp, sign, documents, hr_appraisal, stock_barcode.
2. This is Metatroncube IP. Do not vendor, copy or adapt code from OpenEduCat or any other LGPL/AGPL education addon. Models are designed from ../shared/DOMAIN_MODEL.md, not ported.
3. Use stock Odoo where it fits. account for all invoicing, website_slides for the entire LMS, fleet for vehicles, portal for external users, hr and hr_holidays for staff, payment_* for gateways, survey for quizzes. Writing a custom version of any of these is a bug.
4. Addon suite, not a monolith. Each mc_education_* module installs independently given its declared dependencies, and ports to Odoo 20 independently.
5. No Studio. It is Enterprise. Every view, field and report is code in this repo.

---

2. Environment

Odoo        19.0 Community  (github.com/odoo/odoo, branch 19.0)
Python      3.12
PostgreSQL  16
Node        20 (for asset bundling)

Repo layout:

Odoo/
├── CLAUDE.md                  ← this file
├── docker-compose.yml
├── .env.example
├── odoo.conf
├── scripts/
│   ├── setup.sh               one-command bring-up
│   ├── update.sh              rebuild + upgrade modules
│   ├── backup.sh              pg_dump + filestore
│   └── demo-data.sh           load the demo school
├── addons/
│   ├── mc_education_base/
│   ├── mc_education_admission/
│   ├── mc_education_fees/
│   ├── mc_education_attendance/
│   ├── mc_education_timetable/
│   ├── mc_education_exam/
│   ├── mc_education_portal/
│   ├── mc_education_lms/
│   └── mc_education_theme/
└── third_party/               OCA addons, pinned by commit SHA

update.sh must call backup.sh before any module upgrade, and record the previous image tag for rollback. This is a lesson already paid for on the Frappe track — do not repeat it.

Pin every third-party addon to a commit SHA, never a branch. A moving branch inside a pinned image breaks the build later with no obvious cause.

---

3. Standing security rule

Never trust an identifier supplied by the client.

Every controller route and every method reachable from the portal that accepts a student, guardian, invoice or enrollment identifier must resolve it against request.env.user and raise AccessError for anything the user is not entitled to.

Concretely, for this codebase:

• Every portal-reachable model gets a record rule. No exceptions, including models you think are only reached indirectly. Write the rule in the same commit as the model.
• sudo() requires a comment stating what was checked immediately above it. An uncommented sudo() is treated as a defect in review.
• Guardian access is by relationship, not by role. A guardian sees a student because a mc.student.guardian link exists between them, never because they hold the Guardian group.
• Write a test for each rule. The test asserts that guardian A cannot read student B's invoice, attendance or marks. These tests are not optional and run in CI.

Scene 5 of the demo script requires showing a refused access attempt live on the call. Build toward that being true, not staged.

---

4. Coding standards

• Odoo 19 conventions throughout. No APIs deprecated in 17 or 18.
• Correction (found building O1, verified against a real odoo:19.0 container — an 18-era mental model gets both of these wrong):
  • _sql_constraints = [(name, sql, message), ...] is gone. Declare each constraint as its own class attribute instead: _my_constraint = models.Constraint(sql, message). The rule below ("prefer a database constraint when the database can express it") still holds — only the syntax changed.
  • res.groups.category_id is gone. A group now points at a res.groups.privilege record via privilege_id, and the privilege carries category_id (still an ir.module.category). Create one res.groups.privilege per module category and point every group at it. See addons/mc_education_base/security/mc_education_security.xml for the pattern.
  • Correction (found building O3): res.users.groups_id is gone too — the field is now group_ids. Same [(6, 0, [group_ids...])] Many2many-write syntax otherwise. Matters for every test that creates a user in a specific group (see addons/mc_education_fees/tests/test_access.py), and will matter again for O7's portal users.
• _name, _description and _order on every model. _rec_name where the display field is not name.
• Computed fields declare @api.depends accurately and are store=True only when they need to be searched or grouped. A stored compute with wrong depends is a silent data-corruption bug.
• Constraints: prefer a database constraint (models.Constraint, see above) over @api.constrains when the database can express it. The "one active enrollment per student per year" rule is a database constraint.
• ondelete is explicit on every Many2one. Think about whether it should be restrict (financial and academic history) or cascade (child lines).
• tracking=True on fields a school will argue about later: enrollment status, fee amounts, marks, attendance status.
• Every user-facing string wrapped for translation. The product ships in English now and will need Tamil and French later — retrofitting i18n is miserable.
• ir.model.access.csv in the same commit as the model. Never a follow-up.
• Demo data in demo/, and it must be realistic per ../shared/DEMO_SCRIPT.md — real-looking Indian and Canadian names, plausible amounts, a full term of history.

Testing:

docker compose exec odoo odoo -d school --test-enable --stop-after-init -i mc_education_base

Write tests for: money arithmetic, grade computation from scales, enrollment constraints, and every access rule. Do not write tests for view layouts.

---

5. Module specifications

Build in this order. mc_education_base is a gate — get it reviewed before fanning out.

O1 · mc_education_base

Depends: base, mail, contacts, hr

Model	Key fields
mc.academic.year	name (2026-27), date_start, date_end, is_current
mc.academic.term	name, year_id, date_start, date_end, sequence
mc.program	name, code, sequence_no (sorting), display_label, board, company_id
mc.subject	name, code, program_ids, is_elective
mc.batch	name, program_id, year_id, class_teacher_id, capacity, room_id
mc.room	name, capacity, building, type
mc.student	partner_id, admission_no, name, dob, gender, admission_date, photo, status, blood_group, address_id
mc.guardian	partner_id, name, occupation, phone, email
mc.student.guardian	student_id, guardian_id, relationship, is_primary
mc.teacher	employee_id, subject_ids, max_weekly_periods
mc.enrollment	student_id, program_id, batch_id, year_id, state, roll_no, date_enrolled

Requirements:

• Exactly one mc.academic.year may have is_current = True. Enforce it.
• One Active mc.enrollment per student per year — SQL constraint.
• mc.program.sequence_no drives sort order everywhere. Never sort grades by label.
• admission_no uses an ir.sequence configurable per company.
• Security groups: School Administrator, School Staff, Teacher, Accountant, Guardian (portal), Student (portal).

Acceptance: a student can be created, given a guardian, enrolled in a batch, and the batch roster lists them. Constraint tests pass. Access rules exist for all six groups.

O2 · mc_education_admission

Depends: mc_education_base, website

• mc.applicant with a stage pipeline: Applied → Document Verification → Interview → Offered → Accepted → Enrolled / Rejected. Use mail.thread and stock kanban stages.
• Public website form via stock website form handling. File uploads to ir.attachment.
• Convert action: applicant → mc.student + mc.enrollment, carrying every field and all attachments. Zero re-typing. Application number persists on the student.
• Application number from a configurable ir.sequence.

Acceptance: Demo Scene 2 runs end to end, public form through to enrolled student.

O3 · mc_education_fees

Depends: mc_education_base, account, payment

• mc.fee.category — Tuition, Lab, Library, Transport, Exam
• mc.fee.structure — per program + academic year; lines of category × amount
• mc.fee.schedule — installment plan; term-wise due dates and proportions
• mc.fee.concession — type (Sibling / Merit / Staff / Need-based), percent or fixed, reason, approver
• Invoices are stock account.move, type out_invoice, with mc_student_id and mc_enrollment_id added by _inherit. Do not build an invoice model.
• Concessions appear as negative invoice lines with a reason code. Never a reduced gross.
• Payment through stock payment providers.

Acceptance: Demo Scene 3. A structure generates a correct invoice, a sibling concession recalculates it, an online payment posts a real journal entry and outstanding drops without a manual refresh.

O4 · mc_education_attendance

Depends: mc_education_base

• mc.attendance — student_id, date, session (period or Daily), subject_id, state (Present / Absent / Late / On Leave), marked_by, batch_id
• Unique constraint on student × date × session. Submitting twice must not duplicate.
• A bulk marking view: roster for a batch + period, all defaulted Present, exceptions toggled.
• Mobile-first. This is marked on a phone in a corridor.
• Teachers may only mark their own batches — record rule, not a UI check.

Acceptance: Demo Scene 4. Under three taps per exception. Re-submission is idempotent. A teacher cannot open another teacher's batch by editing the URL.

O5 · mc_education_timetable

Depends: mc_education_base

• mc.timetable.slot — batch_id, weekday, period, subject_id, teacher_id, room_id, year_id, term_id
• Conflict validation on save: a teacher or a room cannot hold two slots in the same weekday+period.
• Three read views over one dataset: by batch, by teacher, by student (resolved through enrollment).
• Auto-generation is out of scope. Demo data is configured by hand.

Acceptance: Demo Scene 7. Three views, one dataset, readable at phone width.

O6 · mc_education_exam

Depends: mc_education_base

• mc.grading.scale + mc.grading.interval — threshold, letter, point, description. Data rows, never code. CBSE, ICSE, IB, Cambridge, Ontario and percentage all expressible.
• mc.exam — name, term, batch, subject, max marks, pass marks, date
• mc.mark — student, exam, marks obtained, computed grade
• Grid mark-entry view: whole class on one screen, tab between fields, keyboard only.
• QWeb report card: logo, all subjects, marks, grades, attendance summary, remarks, signature block. Must be print-clean on A4.

Acceptance: Demo Scene 6. Grades compute from the scale. Changing the scale changes the grades with no code change. PDF has no clipped columns.

O7 · mc_education_portal

Depends: mc_education_fees, mc_education_attendance, mc_education_timetable, mc_education_exam, portal

• Parent and student portal on stock portal. External users cost nothing in Community — this is a commercial advantage, use it.
• Child switcher for guardians with more than one child. This is the most convincing single feature in the demo; give it real design attention.
• Views: fees + pay online, attendance with a month calendar, timetable, results, notices.
• Every controller resolves the student from the authenticated user's guardian links. See §3.

Acceptance: Demo Scene 5, including the live refused-access demonstration.

O8 · mc_education_lms

Depends: mc_education_base, website_slides

Thin glue only. Configure stock website_slides; link a channel to a mc.batch so enrolled students see their courses. Do not build a custom LMS. If this module exceeds ~200 lines, something has gone wrong.

Acceptance: Demo Scene 8.

O9 · mc_education_theme

Depends: mc_education_base

• Per-company branding: logo, primary/secondary colour, school name, favicon, report letterhead.
• Applied to backend, portal, website and every QWeb report.
• Add OCA web_responsive (pinned SHA) — the stock Community backend needs it.
• The ERPNext and Odoo brand names must not be visible anywhere the demo audience will see.

Acceptance: the closing beat — swap to the second demo school in under five minutes.

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6. How to work with me on this

• One workstream per branch: o3-fees, o6-exam.
• One model, one view, or one controller per task. "Build the fees module" produces shallow work.
• Quote the demo scene a task serves, so scope stays honest.
• Always ask for the ir.model.access.csv and record rules in the same change as the model.
• Ask for tests on money, grades, enrollment constraints and access rules. Not on view layouts.
• I will review every access rule and every migration by hand. Surface them, do not bury them in a large diff.
• Commit at every green state.

When something in this spec turns out to be wrong — and some of it will be — say so and propose the correction rather than working around it silently. Then update this file in the same PR.