# Introduction

Welcome to the CaSS docs!

CaSS is an open-source project providing a system for recording and managing competencies, as well as assertions. It serves as a structural foundation for any project that requires tracking progress of users in any domain.

Competency: the ability to do something successfully or efficiently.

Specifically, CaSS is a set of many interrelated software tools meant to be used by developers to reliably and quickly develop a project.

Please note that some parts of this documentation are possibly outdated, as CaSS is continuously being improved.

# Example Use Case

Let's imagine a hypothetical situation that would merit the use of CaSS. A business requires employees to go through lots of training. It would be useful to have a system that keeps track of each employee's progress.

Using CaSS for this will encompass all current and future needs for the project, and hopefully bring up some questions about how exactly this project will take form.

  • CaSS will allow you to declare what exactly each training (aka competency) is
  • CaSS will allow any individual to make assertions about a user's progress. This includes not just being able to say whether someone can or cannot perform a task, but at what level they can perform at
  • CaSS will provide the tools for making sense of assertions, e.g. they may only be made by a supervisor, they may expire every 6 months, or there may be conflicts or complex interactions between assertions
  • CaSS will allow you to establish relations between competencies. For example, in order to be able to keep the shop clean, you must know how to both mop and either sweep or vacuum
  • CaSS will encrypt and provide permissioning for all stored data. Your coworker probably shouldn't be able to see how well you can perform a task, nor should they be able to modify the requirements for a task

Realistically, CaSS is suitable for a much wider array of projects, however. Perhaps you'll require assertions about entire groups of people. Perhaps you're not tracking skills at all. CaSS allows assertions to be made on any competency, skill, knowledge, ability, trait, learning objective, learning outcome, or, really, anything you can think of.

# Developers

If you're a developer, consider checking out the Developer's Guide once you're familiar with the structure of CaSS to find more information on how to work with it. There you'll find tutorials, code references, API documentation, and helpful links to other resources such as our Github and CaSS Sandbox environment.

# Explore the interfaces

# CaSS Authoring Tools UI

The CaSS Authoring Tools provide easy to use User Interfaces for authoring and managing the data within a CaSS system. This is a more tangible way of working with CaSS without writing any code, and also a good way of testing the waters. Get started by creating a user account.

# Join the community

# Subscribe to our Slack Channel

Request access to the CaSS Slack Channel (opens new window) to join the conversation.

You may also email us.