Problem
Students choosing a technical direction usually get a list of job titles, not a structured view of which skills lead where or where they currently stand.
EthioPath AI Pathfinder
A career pathfinder for Ethiopian students and developers: a multi-step technical assessment feeds an AI-guided roadmap of what to learn next.
- Full-stack developer
- Live
- Next.jsReactTypeScriptTailwind CSSLLM API
Goals
- Turn a self-assessment into a concrete, ordered learning roadmap.
- Make a long multi-question assessment resumable rather than fragile.
- Show progress visually at every step.
Solution
A Next.js platform with a step-by-step assessment, persisted answer state so a refresh does not lose progress, a visual roadmap of path nodes, and AI-generated recommendations layered on top of the assessment result.
Key features
- Multi-step technical skill assessment
- State recovery — refresh or return without losing answers
- Visual career-path roadmap with progress nodes
- AI-guided recommendations based on results
- Category badges and progress tracking
Architecture
App Router UI; assessment state persisted client-side and restored on load; roadmap rendered from a typed path tree; AI recommendations requested through a server-side handler so keys never reach the browser.
Technical decisions
- Assessment state is persisted after every answer, because losing ten minutes of input to a refresh is the fastest way to lose a user.
- The roadmap is a data structure (nodes and edges), not a hard-coded page, so paths can change without touching layout.
- AI output is presented as a recommendation next to the deterministic assessment result, not as the only answer.
Tech stack
- Next.js
- React
- TypeScript
- Tailwind CSS
- LLM API
Hardest part
Making guidance feel interactive and structured while keeping the assessment fast and the AI calls off the client.
What I learned
Interactive guidance needs a feedback loop at every step. A single result page at the end is not enough to keep people going.
Result
A live platform where a student completes an assessment, sees a roadmap, and receives targeted next steps.