Knowledge Exchange API – Academic Marketplace Platform

Overview

A dynamic API powering a student‑to‑student marketplace for resources, tutoring, and collaboration. Focused on discoverability, trust, and performance.

Problem

• Fragmented tools and poor content discovery
• No role separation for buyers, sellers, and moderators
• Abuse potential without rate limiting and audit trails

Solution

• Search‑first design with weighted fields and filters
• RBAC: students, mentors, moderators; scoped tokens
• Rate limiting and API keys to prevent abuse
• Content moderation workflow and activity logging

Outcomes

• Engagement: 3× increase in saved searches and messages
• Scale: 1.8k MAU within first quarter
• Performance: p95 < 250ms on core endpoints

Stack

• Node.js/TypeScript, Postgres, Redis, Elastic‑like search, JWT

Notes

Prioritizing search relevance and trust signals (profiles, reviews, flags) unlocked network effects faster than adding new features.