Tutorial 01: Building A Small Imageboard With Real Local Models

This tutorial starts after the quickstart. The quickstart uses fake command agents so you can verify the pipeline deterministically. Here, you will use a named NightShift template and let a local model build the target application.

The target is a compact 4chan-style imageboard: boards, threads, replies, images, tripcodes, sessions, reports, and moderation. That is larger than a toy parser, but it is a better first real-model target because failures are ordinary web-app failures: routes, schema, file handling, tests, and model helpers.

What The Template Creates

Run this from a disposable parent directory:

nightshift init --template tutorial-imageboard --root nightshift-imageboard
cd nightshift-imageboard

The template creates:

nightshift.yaml
.nightshift/
  agents/
    planner.md
    implementer.md
    reviewer.md
  tasks.md
src/
  imageboard/
tests/
templates/
static/
  uploads/
  thumbs/

NightShift control files live in .nightshift/. Application source lives under src/, tests under tests/, HTML templates under templates/, and image/static files under static/.

The template does not create the Flask app, schema, models, or tests. That is intentional: TASK-001 asks the agent to create the initial application slice. This is a better exercise of NightShift than pre-building the app and asking for a small patch.

Prerequisites

Install NightShift from this repository:

python -m pip install -e .

Install target project dependencies:

python -m pip install flask pillow pytest flask_sqlalchemy

Install and start Ollama, then make sure the model is available:

ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:14b
ollama list

NightShift uses Ollama's local HTTP API, normally at http://localhost:11434.

Task Plan

The template writes this task sequence to .nightshift/tasks.md.

Board and thread foundation Implement the initial data model, SQLite schema, model helpers, /board/<name> and /thread/<id> routes, and tests.
Image upload and thumbnails Add image attachments, metadata, upload storage under static/uploads, and thumbnails under static/thumbs.
Bump ordering and reply counts Sort board threads by most recent reply and maintain reply counters.
Tripcodes and session cookies Add anonymous names, optional tripcodes, and lightweight poster identity.
Moderation and report queue Add reporting, report queue, dismiss actions, and post hiding.

Run only TASK-001 first. Do not ask the model to implement uploads, tripcodes, or moderation until the previous tasks pass.

Validate And Run

Validate the project:

nightshift validate

Run the first task:

nightshift run --task TASK-001

Start the dashboard:

nightshift web --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8765

Open http://127.0.0.1:8765/.

What To Inspect

Useful artifacts:

.nightshift/runs/<run-id>/devlog.md
.nightshift/runs/<run-id>/run.log
.nightshift/runs/<run-id>/tasks/TASK-001/plan.md
.nightshift/runs/<run-id>/tasks/TASK-001/context-pack.md
.nightshift/runs/<run-id>/tasks/TASK-001/proposed.patch
.nightshift/runs/<run-id>/tasks/TASK-001/test-output.txt
.nightshift/runs/<run-id>/tasks/TASK-001/final-notes.md

The dashboard surfaces devlog.md, run status, logs, and links to finer-grained artifacts.

Scope Note

This project is still not tiny. The advantage over a language interpreter is that the model works in familiar web-app territory and failures are easier to inspect. If TASK-001 fails, read devlog.md, test-output.txt, and the implementer output before increasing retries or changing prompts.

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