What is ulams

ulams is a headless learning management system. The API owns courses, learners, progress and access; any number of frontends consume it. The long-term goal is an AI-native LMS whose courses stay in sync with their sources and adapt to each learner, with every generated element citing the source it came from.

This page separates what exists in the code today from what is planned. The full plan is on the roadmap.

Origin: Wellms and EscolaLMS

ulams started from Wellms (EscolaLMS), a Laravel REST API built from many escolalms/* composer packages, with a React learner app and a React admin. In ulams:

• all PHP packages are vendored as source under api/packages (namespace Ulams\), and no escolalms/* package is installed from Packagist (ADR 0001);
• the code, configuration and infrastructure were renamed from EscolaLMS/Wellms to ulams (ADR 0002);
• the API runs on Laravel 13 and PHP 8.4 (api/composer.json), upgraded from Laravel 9;
• the recommender package was removed (ADR 0006).

Headless architecture in brief

Part	Folder	What it is
API	api/	Laravel REST API, the system of record; modules in api/packages/*
H5P service	api/h5p/	Node service for the H5P player and editor, isolated because H5P is GPL (ADR 0003)
PDF service	api/pdf/	Node renderer for certificates and PDF templates (pdfme)
Admin	admin/	Admin and author panel (React, umi/max, Ant Design)
Reference frontend	front/web/	Server-rendered learner site (Astro) - the frontend the demos use (ADR 0008)
SDK and UI catalogue	front/sdk/, front/ui/	Framework-free API client and the component catalogue used by front/web
Legacy learner app	front/src/	The React learner app inherited from Wellms; still covers features front/web does not have yet

More detail: architecture.

Tenants: a site per customer

One API deployment serves a platform plus any number of tenants. Each tenant gets its own database, storage bucket, Passport key pair and hosts, selected from the request host (api/packages/tenancy, ADR 0007). Locally a tenant coffee has its API at coffee.localhost, its learner site at coffee.app.localhost and its admin at coffee.admin.localhost. Each tenant has its own name, theme preset and accent colour. See tenancy and managing tenants.

What exists today

• Courses made of lessons and topics, with many topic types: rich text, video, audio, image, PDF, embeds, H5P, SCORM, cmi5, GIFT quizzes, projects, LiaScript and LTI external tools.
• LTI 1.3 on both sides: ulams can launch external tools, and other LMSs can launch ulams courses (round trips against real LMSs are still being verified).
• Certificates and PDF templates rendered by the pdfme-based api/pdf service.
• Webinars, in-person events, consultations, payments, cart and vouchers inherited from Wellms.
• Demo mode for throwaway tenants: password-less login and an hourly reset (demo academies).
• The Astro reference frontend for learners, used by the six demo academies.

What is planned Coming

None of the AI features are built yet; there is no LLM code in the repository.

• Living Course. Courses connected to their sources (uploads, Git, later Drive or Notion). When a source changes, ulams proposes an update as a diff, citing the changed fragments; the author accepts or rejects it, and learner progress is preserved.
• AI Course Builder with citations. Upload sources, answer a short interview, approve learning objectives and an outline, and get a course where every generated element links to the source fragment it is based on. AI proposes, the author approves every change. See Course Builder.
• Personalisation. A new learner-insights module with explainable risk signals, remediation and an AI tutor that answers only from course sources.
• Commerce through Sylius as a separate headless service, with the LMS keeping control of who has access.

Note

The order and status of these items are tracked in the roadmap. If a page in these docs describes a planned feature, it is marked “Coming”.

Open core and licensing

The business model is open core: a free, self-hostable core, with paid cloud hosting, enterprise features and support planned on top. Licensing in the repository today (LICENSING.md has the details):

• MIT for the root, front/, admin/, api/pdf and almost all api/packages/*; the Laravel application in api/ is Apache-2.0.
• api/h5p is GPL-3.0-or-later and runs as a separate program. No GPL or AGPL code is linked into the API or bundled into the admin or the frontends; they reach it only over HTTP or an iframe.
• Imported code keeps its original copyright notices.

LICENSING.md is an engineering summary, not legal advice.