# Build brief — a focused alternative to Playpass

> **Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 40/100 · **Category:** Scheduling
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/playpass
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Playpass. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**Playpass** — Registration, payments, rosters and schedules for recreational sports leagues, camps and tournaments. It currently costs $12.85/mo.

The mechanics here are not exotic: a signup form, a payment link, a roster table, a round robin schedule generator and a standings page. An agent will get you all of that in a focused implementation, and if you run one league for one hundred people it will be genuinely fine. The part that hurts is that you are now the payment processor, the refund desk and the support line for parents who cannot find the confirmation email, during the two weeks a year when everyone signs up at once. Waivers, discount codes, waitlists, team invites, partial payments and mid-season roster moves are each small features and collectively a product. Build it if you run the league yourself and like owning your data; do not build it if you are running leagues for other people's money.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Playpass that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

Publishes a league page with a paid registration form, collects Stripe payments, builds teams from the signup list, and generates a round robin schedule with a standings table.

- Model availability, accept bookings, handle time zones, and send confirmations.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- A small host or VPS that stays up during registration week.
- Someone technical reachable on signup day.

### Data and integrations

- Stripe account in test mode, then live keys if you take real money.
- Transactional email via Resend or SMTP credentials.

Each of these needs a real account, credential, or quota. Set them up before writing feature code.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build a self-hosted league registration and scheduling app for a single organizer running recreational sports leagues.

Stack, no substitutions:
- Next.js 15 with App Router and TypeScript
- SQLite via Prisma, file at ./data/app.db
- Tailwind CSS, plain and boring, no component library
- Stripe Checkout in test mode for payments
- Resend for transactional email, fall back to logging emails to console if RESEND_API_KEY is missing
- Single admin password from ADMIN_PASSWORD in .env, session cookie, no user accounts for admins

Data model: League (name, sport, season dates, fee in cents, capacity, public slug, status), Registration (name, email, phone, notes, waiverAcceptedAt, paymentStatus, stripeSessionId), Team, TeamMember, Game (round, date, homeTeam, awayTeam, homeScore, awayScore).

Public side:
- /l/[slug] shows league info, remaining spots, and a registration form
- Submitting creates a pending Registration and redirects to Stripe Checkout
- Webhook at /api/stripe/webhook marks the registration paid and emails a confirmation
- If the league is at capacity, put the registration on a waitlist instead of charging
- /l/[slug]/schedule shows the generated schedule and a standings table computed from entered scores

Admin side at /admin:
- Create and edit leagues, view registrations with payment status, export CSV
- Manually mark a registration paid or refunded, no Stripe refund API call, just a status field and a note
- Auto-assign paid registrations into N teams, allow drag-free manual reassignment via a dropdown per player
- Generate a round robin schedule across a list of date slots, regenerate wipes and rebuilds
- Enter scores per game, standings recompute from wins, losses, ties and point differential

Explicitly out of scope: refunds through Stripe, discount codes, installment payments, a mobile app, push notifications, multi-organizer permissions, analytics, telemetry.

All secrets in .env, provide .env.example with DATABASE_URL, ADMIN_PASSWORD, STRIPE_SECRET_KEY, STRIPE_WEBHOOK_SECRET, RESEND_API_KEY. Include a seed script that creates one league with twenty paid registrations so the schedule and standings pages have something to show. README covers local run, Stripe CLI webhook forwarding, and one loud warning that taking real money means real refund and tax obligations.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- Refunds, chargebacks, failed cards and the payout paperwork all become your problem.
- No polished mobile experience for players checking game times and RSVPs.
- Waivers, medical info handling and minors' data get no compliance thinking unless you do it yourself.
- No shared discovery: players cannot find your league the way they find one on a platform.
- Nobody else answers support email when a parent's registration silently fails.

## What you still own after launch

- Secure credentials, rotate secrets, and handle provider rate limits.
- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.

## Risk

**High consequence.** Use this as a prototype or personal aid. Keep a qualified human and an established provider in the loop for consequential decisions.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: low. No reviewed project implementation is linked yet.

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