Building · 25%
Talaqqi
An early experiment in designing a focused space for private online Qur’an learning, inspired by watching my wife teach and study Qur’an online.
Overview
- Status
- Building
- Progress
- 25%
- Difficulty
- Ambitious
- Started
- Aug 26, 2026
Stack & tools
Links
01 / MOTIVATION
Why I built this
Talaqqi began with something close to home. My wife, Djihan, teaches Qur’an online at Albata. At the same time, she also joins an online pesantren and takes part in talaqqi and memorization assessments. Watching these activities become part of her everyday routine made me curious about the tools behind them. Teaching, recitation, correction, scheduling, and progress tracking often happen across several separate interactions. I started wondering what a product designed specifically around that learning relationship might look like. The longer-term idea is a platform that could connect freelance Qur’an teachers with learners from different age groups, but the project is still far from proving that model.
02 / QUESTION TO EXPLORE
What I wanted to understand or solve
Online Qur’an learning is more than placing a teacher and learner inside a video call. The teacher needs to listen carefully, point to the material being discussed, follow the learner’s position, give corrections, and leave useful notes for the next session. The learner also needs a clear path before, during, and after class: checking their device, waiting for the teacher, following the current ayah, receiving feedback, and knowing what to practise next. The current prototype explores how these moments could exist in one focused experience. It does not yet prove that teachers and learners need a new platform, or that a freelance teacher marketplace would be viable.
03 / APPROACH
How I turned the idea into something testable
I started with role-based experiences for learners, teachers, and administrators. The interface follows the journey from a dashboard to device preparation, a waiting room, the live classroom, and a post-session summary. The classroom prototype combines browser-based audio and video with an RTL Qur’an reader. A teacher can select an ayah, and the learner’s view can follow that position through synchronized classroom events. I built the application as a modular Next.js project with a provider layer around media and realtime communication. The intent is to keep the interface independent from a specific WebRTC or realtime vendor while the technical direction is still being tested. The repository also contains a PostgreSQL schema, row-level security policies, Supabase adapters, tests, and deployment documentation. These form a production-oriented foundation, but the public deployment still operates in demo mode without real Supabase authentication or persistence. The potential marketplace is currently only a direction. Teacher discovery, verification, availability, matching, pricing, payments, reviews, and dispute handling have not been implemented.
04 / FIELD NOTES
Starting from observation
The idea did not begin with a marketplace diagram or a list of features. It began by watching Djihan move between teaching at Albata, joining an online pesantren, attending talaqqi, and completing memorization assessments.
What interested me was not only that these activities happened online. It was the amount of coordination surrounding a relatively intimate learning process: preparing for a call, listening closely, locating a verse, correcting a recitation, remembering progress, and preparing for the next meeting.
That made Talaqqi feel appropriate for the Lab. It is a way for me to turn a familiar observation into a product question without pretending that I already know the answer.
What exists today
The current build covers learner, teacher, and administrator interfaces. A learner can review an upcoming class, perform a device check, enter a waiting room, join a classroom, and move through a session flow.
The classroom includes camera and microphone controls, an RTL Qur’an reader, ayah highlighting, a recitation mode, reactions, and synchronized classroom state. The teacher experience also includes class preparation and a post-session summary with private and learner-visible notes.
There is a database design, Supabase integration layer, realtime adapter, native WebRTC provider, authorization policies, and automated testing. However, the public demo uses seeded data and local browser state. It should be read as an interactive prototype, not a working learning service.
The media problem
Audio quality matters differently for recitation than it does for an ordinary meeting. Browser features such as echo cancellation, noise suppression, and automatic gain control can help a conversation, but they can also affect how subtle sounds are heard.
The prototype includes a recitation mode and configurable audio processing, but that does not solve the problem by itself. It still needs testing with real teachers, learners, devices, mobile networks, and restrictive network conditions.
Direct peer-to-peer WebRTC also cannot guarantee that every connection will work. A reliable production version would likely require TURN infrastructure and, if group classes become part of the product, a different media architecture.
A platform is more than a classroom
The live classroom is only one part of the broader idea. Connecting freelance teachers and learners would introduce questions that the prototype does not answer yet: how teachers are verified, how learners choose someone they trust, how schedules work, and how quality or safeguarding should be handled.
There are also questions around pricing, payments, cancellations, privacy, and the suitability of different teachers for children or adult learners. Those problems are more consequential than adding another screen.
For now, I am keeping the distinction clear: the classroom experience has been prototyped, while the marketplace remains a direction to investigate.
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