Practice PartnersCopy Anchor Link

Lets debaters find each other for practice rounds between tournaments. Volunteer to be challenged, volunteer to judge, or both, and say which formats, styles, speed, and level you're comfortable with. Then get matched — anonymously — with a compatible debater and send them a request for a virtual round.

• Route: /practice/partners. Also the first panel in the Coach Workspace's Practice section (/coaching?stage=practice).
• Package: debate-webview (UI, wire types, action rules) and apps/debate-ai.com (API, queries).
• API: GET /api/practice-partners; PUT /api/practice-partners/profile; POST /api/practice-partners/match; POST /api/practice-partners/challenges; PATCH /api/practice-partners/challenges/[challengeId]

What it showsCopy Anchor Link

• Your practice profile. This has two switches: Open to challenges lists you as a debater, and Volunteer to judge lists you as a judge. Under them you set formats (PF, LD, Policy, Parli, Worlds/BP, Congress), the styles you're comfortable with (traditional/lay, progressive/tech, plans/CPs/DAs, critiques, theory & T, philosophy/framework, truth-testing), speed, experience level, availability, and a note. Turning both switches off takes you out of matching and judging but keeps your preferences.
• Your challenges. They're grouped as Waiting on you (challenges to answer, judging invitations), Upcoming rounds (soonest first), Sent, and a few closed ones. An accepted round shows its room code. Debaters and the judge paste it into the round workspace's Cameras panel to join the same peer-to-peer webcam room.
• Rounds needing a judge. This only appears for judge volunteers. It lists accepted rounds with an empty judge seat, and picking one up notifies both debaters.
• Find a practice partner. There is no public list of volunteers. Pick a format (or any) and press Find me a match: the server scores everyone open to challenges against your profile — shared formats count most, then shared styles, then speed and level — and draws one of the five most compatible at random, weighted by score. The match is shown anonymously: level, speed, formats and styles (the ones you share highlighted), a compatibility percentage, and whether they also judge — no name, avatar, availability or note. Send request opens a short form with the format (shared formats first), resolution, optional start time and a message. Find another draws again, skipping everyone already shown and anyone you already have a request waiting on.

How it worksCopy Anchor Link

A challenge moves through pending → accepted | declined (the opponent answers), or cancelled. The challenger can cancel at any time before the round. The opponent can call it off once they've accepted. The judge seat is empty, invited (the challenger named a judge), or confirmed (the judge said yes, or picked up an unjudged round). The judge can decline an invitation or step down later.

Who may do what is one pure function, applyChallengeAction in debate-webview/lib/practice-partners/challenge-actions.ts. The PATCH route enforces it, and the board uses it to decide which buttons to show. The write only lands if the challenge is still in the state the action was computed from. So if two judges pick up the same round at the same time, the second gets a 409 instead of overwriting the first.

Each change creates a practice_challenge row in the existing notifications feed for everyone else in the round, linking back to /practice/partners.

Anonymity. The match endpoint never sends a name or account id. The browser gets an opaque token instead (apps/debate-ai.com/lib/practice-partners/match-token.ts): the matched debater's id, the viewer's id and a two-hour expiry, sealed with AES-GCM under a key derived from the auth secret. POST …/challenges accepts it as matchToken and opens it server-side; a token opens only for the viewer it was minted for. Until a challenge is accepted, each debater sees the other as "Your practice match" (ANONYMOUS_PRACTICE_PERSON, applied in toWireChallenges), and the notifications for sending, declining or calling off a pending request don't name the sender. Accepting reveals both names.

Safety rules. Matching requires an account, and guest (anonymous) accounts can't volunteer or send challenges. A block from Contacts in either direction keeps each person out of the other's matches, stops them challenging each other, and keeps the round off the other's "needing a judge" list. A blocked challenge gets the same "not open to challenges" reply as a volunteer who has switched off, so the reply doesn't reveal the block. Each debater can have at most ten challenges waiting for an answer, and only one per opponent.

Tables. practice_profiles has one row per user: role flags plus a JSON preferences payload. practice_challenges has one row per challenge. Rows are never deleted by the feature; a closed challenge keeps its status.

Judge PoolCopy Anchor Link

Below the practice board, the same page has a Judge Pool (#judge-pool) for tournament judging, as opposed to practice rounds.

• Volunteer as a judge. Pick up to three upcoming weekends from the circuit calendar's season weeks (the same A–Y + Z weeks as the Debate Majors calendar). Each weekend row shows its week letter, dates and the majors running that Friday–Sunday. Add the states you're in (up to five), switch on Able to travel if you'll judge out of state, pick the formats you judge, and write your judge philosophy. List me for hire off hides you without losing the listing. Weekends drop off once they pass; with none left you're out of the pool until you pick new ones.
• Hire a judge. Every listed judge, by name, with their weekends, states, travel, formats and philosophy. Filter by weekend, tournament state and format. A judge fits a state if they're in it or will travel; in-state judges come first. Hire sends a request: tournament name, one of the judge's weekends, a pay offer and a message.
• Hire requests. The judge accepts or declines; the organizer can cancel while it's waiting, and either side can call off an accepted one. Each change sends a judge_hire notification to the other side, linking to #judge-pool.

Payment isn't connected. The pay offer is text. Nothing is charged or paid out on the site; the two sides settle pay directly once a request is accepted. The site's Stripe setup only sells subscriptions through Payment Links, which can't pay a judge.

How it works. The weekends come from SEASON_MAJORS in debate-webview/lib/judge-pool/season-calendar.ts, a copy of the dated events in packages/debate-tournaments/src/ui/majors/data.ts; a test fails if the two drift. Validation and the hire rules (applyHireAction) are in debate-webview/lib/judge-pool/validation.ts, and the pool filter is filter.ts next to it. The API is GET /api/judge-pool, PUT /api/judge-pool/listing, POST /api/judge-pool/hires and PATCH /api/judge-pool/hires/[hireId], over apps/debate-ai.com/lib/judge-pool/queries.ts. Guests can't list or hire, blocks hide people from each other, an organizer can have 20 requests waiting and one open request per judge per weekend.

Tables. judge_pool_listings (one row per user, lists as JSON) and judge_hire_requests (one row per request, never deleted). They ship to D1 as packages/debate-webview/migrations/0001_judge_pool.sql.

Known gapsCopy Anchor Link

• There's no in-app messaging. Beyond the challenge message, debaters arrange details elsewhere, for example through Contacts.
• A proposed time is a single suggestion. There's no counter-proposal. To change it, decline and send a new challenge.
• Nothing links a finished practice round back to its challenge, so results and judge feedback aren't recorded here yet.
• Matching draws from the 200 most recently updated volunteers.
• Compatibility is a deterministic score over the profile fields; the free-text note and availability aren't read by the matcher (and aren't shown, since they could identify someone).
• A pending request's judge seat can't be filled by invitation any more — the judge list isn't public — so judges pick up accepted rounds instead.
• A request that is called off after being accepted shows the other debater as anonymous again, since only accepted reveals names.
• The judge pool takes no payment, and has no contract or confirmation beyond the accepted request.
• Judge weekends are limited to the 2026–27 circuit calendar; next season's weekends need a new SEASON_MAJORS list.
• The pool lists the 200 most recently updated listings.