Support Desk Mini

This is Vedya’s runnable practice system. It is intentionally small, but it has real engineering surfaces:

HTTP API.
SQLite database.
Validation.
Idempotency.
Audit log.
Draft generation simulation.
Human approval gate.
Tests.
Intentional bug modes for debugging drills.

No third-party packages are required.

Start

cd starter-projects/support-desk-mini
python3 app.py

The API runs on http://localhost:8080 by default.

Use a different port:

PORT=8090 python3 app.py

Use a different database file:

SUPPORT_DESK_DB=/tmp/support-desk.sqlite3 python3 app.py

Run Tests

python3 -m unittest -v

API Examples

Health:

curl -i http://localhost:8080/health

Create a ticket:

curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8080/tickets \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'X-User-Id: user-1' \
  -H 'Idempotency-Key: demo-1' \
  -d '{"title":"Login broken","description":"Cannot access account"}'

List tickets:

curl -i http://localhost:8080/tickets

Add a comment:

curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8080/tickets/1/comments \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'X-User-Id: agent-1' \
  -d '{"body":"Asked user for screenshot"}'

Create a draft response:

curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8080/tickets/1/draft \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'X-User-Id: agent-1' \
  -d '{}'

Approve a draft:

curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8080/drafts/1/approve \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'X-User-Id: agent-1' \
  -H 'X-User-Role: agent' \
  -d '{}'

Intentional Bug Modes

Use these only for labs.

VEDYA_BUG_MODE=accept_empty_title python3 app.py
VEDYA_BUG_MODE=approval_bypass python3 app.py
VEDYA_BUG_MODE=duplicate_idempotency python3 app.py

Bug modes:

accept_empty_title: server accepts empty ticket titles.
approval_bypass: non-agents can approve drafts.
duplicate_idempotency: repeated create requests with the same idempotency key create duplicate tickets.

Learning Tasks

Trace POST /tickets from HTTP handler to database row.
Add a new ticket status.
Add a test for an invalid status transition.
Add a new endpoint that returns audit events.
Enable one bug mode, reproduce the failure, write a postmortem, then fix or disable the bug mode.