01 · The problem
Most exam apps either dump a PDF bank on the table or pretend they can predict a pass. Hiraya needed a daily lock-and-learn loop — tracks, explanations, and progress that stay honest about being unofficial practice.
Hiraya is an unofficial Philippine exam training platform Al Andrew Paul Beltran (Al Beltran) is building as founder of Momentra Labs. The public preview at hiraya-phi.vercel.app is practice for Civil Service and university entrance prep: lock an answer, see why a miss happened, and come back tomorrow. It is not affiliated with the Civil Service Commission or any school. The product is in progress.
02 · My role
Solo founder · product & engineering (Momentra Labs)
03 · The result
Shipping a Next.js trainer on Vercel with on-device save, original practice items, CSC Professional / Subprofessional and university tracks, mock exams, ranks, and a public marketing surface. Sign-in is optional and stays on the device. Billing is not completed in the browser.
04 · Architecture
- 01
Next.js App Router preview at hiraya-phi.vercel.app
- 02
On-device trainer save — optional local sign-in, not a cloud account
- 03
Unofficial tracks mapped to published CSC announcement headings
- 04
Practice, mock exams, progress, and ranks in one product
The story
- The constraints
- Unofficial practice only. No CSC or university affiliation. Sign-in and progress stay on the device.
- The hard part
- A public preview has to be playable without pretending the bank, billing, or analysis are finished.
- The trade-off
- Shipping the lock loop first is honest. It also means the card has to say in progress.
- What broke
- Not a published outage. The failure mode to avoid is selling unofficial practice as an official paper.
- What changed
- The preview is live. The product is still being built.
- What I would do differently
- I would still ship the loop first. I would not wait for a full bank to put a URL on the lab.
Diagram
Sanitized architecture. Hover is optional — tap or focus a box.
Learner
- Purpose
- Picks a track and locks an answer.
- Trade-off
- One device owns the save.
- Scale
- No cloud account required.
Implementation
- Public preview at hiraya-phi.vercel.app
- Unofficial CSC Professional, CSC Subprofessional, and university tracks
- Lock-an-answer practice with a short explanation on a miss
- Mock exams, progress, ranks, and on-device save
- No official affiliation and no pass promise
Challenges & outcomes
Challenges
- Keeping unofficial practice clearly unofficial while still being useful
- Shipping a public preview before the bank, billing, and analysis are finished
Outcomes
- Public preview at https://hiraya-phi.vercel.app/
- In-progress Momentra Labs product, not a finished exam product and not a client case study
Lessons
- A trainer belongs in a portfolio when someone can open the URL and lock an answer
- In-progress is a status, not a reason to hide the work