Live Quiz Platform

At a Glance — Plain-English Summary
Audience Anyone — author, stakeholder, prospective user
Generated 2026-06-05
Source of truth .claude/context/knowledgebase/summary.md

A non-technical tour of the platform. For the detailed product spec see the PRD; for the live engineering checklist see the Build plan.

A plain-English tour of what we're building. No code, no tech jargon, no acronyms. For the detailed product spec see the PRD; for the live engineering checklist see the Build Plan.

What is it

A pub-quiz platform. The kind of quiz you'd run on a Friday night — questions on a big screen, teams answering on their phones, a quizmaster walking the room with a controller in hand. Polished enough to feel like a TV game show, simple enough that one person can set it up and run it on the venue's Wi-Fi. No internet required while the quiz is running.

Who it's for

Person What they do
Quiz author Writes the quiz: the questions, the rounds, the visuals, the timing. Usually the same person who runs the night.
Quizmaster Runs the live night — walks the room, reads questions, calls out reveals, manages scoring. Same person as the author in most cases.
Teams (the players) Sit at a table with one shared phone or tablet per team. Type team name, join, answer questions.

The four apps

Four pieces of software that talk to each other over the venue's Wi-Fi.

Designer

Where the quiz gets written. Runs on Windows or Mac.

A slide-by-slide editor a bit like PowerPoint, but each slide has two screens: what shows on the big TV / projector (the "Host canvas") and what shows on the team's phone (the "Client canvas"). Drag elements onto either canvas — text, images, audio clips, video, multiple-choice options, free-text boxes, drawing pads, buzzers, timers, leaderboards, mini-games — configure them, save the quiz to a file. Push it over Wi-Fi to the laptop / iPad you're going to run the night from.

Each slide also has a private host-notes field — hints, the answer key, presentation cues — text only the quizmaster ever sees.

Host

The "TV show" app. Runs on a laptop or iPad plugged into the venue's projector or TV.

Loads a quiz file, advertises itself on the local Wi-Fi so teams can find it, accepts each team as they join, and then runs the show: shows each slide on the big screen, plays the audio/video, runs the animations, collects the answers, applies scoring, reveals the leaderboard.

If two screens are connected (e.g. laptop screen plus projector), it splits into an audience window on the projector (clean slide canvas, branded look) and an operator window on the laptop (mirror + host-notes + timer + scores + controls).

Client

The team's app. Runs on phones and tablets. One shared device per team.

Joins a Host over Wi-Fi, enters team name (and from Alpha onwards, a team avatar + a buzzer jingle), then shows the team's view of each slide — the answer boxes, the multiple-choice taps, the buzzer button, the drawing pad — whatever that slide asks for. Submits the team's answer when they hit go. Shows the team their current score.

Remote

The quizmaster's pocket controller. Runs on a phone or tablet.

Pairs with the Host on the Wi-Fi. Mirrors what's on the big screen, shows the host-notes for the current slide, shows the live scoreboard / timer. Buttons to advance to the next slide and go back in the MVP. From Alpha onwards: jump to any slide, trigger a leaderboard reveal, lock or unlock the teams' input, extend or skip the timer, override a team's score. Lets the quizmaster walk the room and run the show from anywhere in the venue.

What you can do — feature highlights

The features below are the user-facing capabilities the v1 ships. Each is delivered through one of the four apps above.

Writing a quiz (Designer)

Running the night (Host)

Playing as a team (Client)

Quizmaster controls (Remote)

What ships when

The platform lands in four release phases, each adding to what came before.

Phase Headline
MVP The minimum playable quiz night. One author, one quizmaster, several team devices. All four apps work end-to-end across the supported platforms. Core elements only — text, multiple choice, free text, numeric, true/false, timer, leaderboard. Remote does advance + go-back. Loaded .quiz files run offline.
Alpha The full quiz capability. Rich element catalogue (audio, image, video, drawing, buzzer, ranking, more question types). Animated reveals. Crash recovery — the Host can pick up a session right where it crashed, with every team back at their score. Remote gains the full command set. Per-team avatars + buzzer jingles.
Beta Production polish. Brand-true visual language across every app. Final sound design. Mini-games (internal clock, team shoot, spin-wheel modifier). More question types (categories, match-pairs, image-reveal, word-scramble buzzer). Theme system so each quiz can declare its own look. Real-device validation. A live Quiz UK pilot night.
Production The launch build. Signed installers in every app store (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mac App Store, direct DMG). Privacy policy. Store listings. Crash reporting. Public release.

What's deliberately not in v1

Things people sometimes ask about that we chose not to ship in v1, on purpose. Some live in a stretch backlog for a future release.