Building an AI-Powered Learning Platform for Sauna Education

SaunaHacker was not just a website with videos.

It was a learning platform that needed to support both structured educational content and personal user workflows.

Users needed to be able to watch lessons, take notes, upload their own personal videos, access paid content, manage subscriptions, and use the platform as part of their own learning process.

At the same time, administrators needed tools to upload and manage educational videos, organize content into categories, edit subtitles, add subtitles manually, upload subtitle files, generate chapters automatically, and insert chapters manually when needed.

The challenge was to:

The platform had to connect education, video delivery, AI, payments, personal learning tools, administration, and localization into one coherent product.

I helped build SaunaHacker as a full SaaS-style learning platform.

Instead of treating the project as a simple library of educational videos, the platform was designed as a structured digital product with user accounts, paid access, personal notes, video uploads, content categories, subtitle workflows, chapter management, subscription logic, and internal administration.

The technical foundation was built around modern web infrastructure, including Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Supabase, Stripe, Mux, OpenAI API, and Vercel.

This created a flexible base for managing users, learning content, subscriptions, uploaded videos, subtitles, chapters, payments, and future product features.

The solution focused on making SaunaHacker work as a scalable learning product:

The goal was not only to launch the platform, but to create a foundation that could support long-term product development.

A key part of the project was designing SaunaHacker as a real learning platform, not just a passive video archive.

The platform needed to support active learning behavior.

That meant users needed more than access to content. They needed tools to track and support their own learning process.

The platform included personal notes, allowing users to write and store their own thoughts, observations, and learning points directly inside the product experience.

It also supported personal video uploads, making the platform more flexible for users who wanted to work with their own content as part of the learning process.

This helped turn SaunaHacker into a more interactive learning environment.

The learning layer supported:

For a learning product, this matters because the value is not only in the content itself, but also in how easily users can interact with it, organize it, and return to it.

The platform included a video category system to keep educational content organized.

This was important because as the number of videos grows, content discovery becomes a product problem.

Without clear structure, users can quickly lose orientation inside a learning platform.

Video categories helped create a more organized experience and allowed the platform to scale with more content over time.

The category system supported:

Instead of relying on a flat list of videos, SaunaHacker was built with structured content management in mind.

SaunaHacker needed to support multiple types of video uploads.

Administrators needed to upload official educational videos for the platform.

Users also needed the ability to upload their own personal videos.

This created two different upload workflows with different product purposes.

Admin video uploads supported the core educational content of the platform.

Personal user uploads supported individual learning workflows and allowed users to work with their own material inside the product.

The video upload system supported:

This made video a central part of the product, not just an embedded asset.

Video delivery was one of the most important technical parts of the platform.

A learning platform depends heavily on smooth playback. If videos load slowly, buffer often, or do not work well across devices, the whole product experience suffers.

To solve this, the platform used Mux-based video infrastructure with automatic video quality.

This allowed video playback to adapt depending on the user’s device, connection, and viewing conditions.

Instead of serving the same heavy video file to every user, the platform could deliver a smoother streaming experience through adaptive quality.

This helped support:

For SaunaHacker, video was not just a media file embedded on a page.

It was a core part of the learning experience.

AI was integrated into the platform to support automation, localization, and learning-related workflows.

One important AI-powered feature was subtitle translation into seven languages.

Instead of relying only on manual subtitle translation, the platform used AI-assisted workflows to make video content more accessible to a broader audience.

AI also supported automatic chapter generation.

This helped turn long-form video content into a more structured learning experience by generating useful sections that users could navigate more easily.

The AI layer supported the platform by:

For a learning platform, AI is valuable when it improves both operations and the user experience.

That was the focus for SaunaHacker.

The platform included automatic chapter generation for videos.

This was important because educational videos often contain multiple topics, sections, or learning points.

Without chapters, users have to scrub through the video manually to find the part they need.

Automatic chapter generation helped make the content easier to navigate and more useful as a learning resource.

At the same time, the platform also supported manual chapter insertion.

This mattered because AI-generated chapters are helpful, but administrators still need editorial control.

The chapter system supported:

This combination gave the platform both automation and manual control.

Subtitle workflows were another important part of the platform.

SaunaHacker needed more than basic subtitle display.

The platform supported subtitle editing, manual subtitle addition, subtitle file uploads, and AI-powered subtitle translation into seven languages.

This gave administrators more control over video localization and accessibility.

The subtitle system supported:

This made the platform more scalable from a content operations perspective.

Instead of handling every subtitle workflow externally, key subtitle operations could be managed directly inside the product.

SaunaHacker was built around paid access, so subscription logic was a key part of the platform.

The system needed to handle user accounts, payment status, active plans, access permissions, and subscription-based content visibility.

Stripe was integrated to manage payments and subscriptions securely.

The subscription system supported:

This created the business layer of the platform.

Instead of manually managing access, SaunaHacker could connect payment status directly to what a user could access inside the product.

The platform also included family plan logic.

This added another layer of complexity because the system needed to support more than one individual user paying for one individual account.

Family plans required thinking through account relationships, access permissions, and how multiple users could be connected under one paid plan.

This helped make SaunaHacker more flexible as a consumer subscription product.

Family plans supported the platform by:

This kind of feature is important because it moves the product beyond a basic subscription model and creates more pricing flexibility.

SaunaHacker also included the ability to gift subscriptions.

Gift subscriptions are not just a small payment feature. They require a separate user flow because the person paying is not always the same person who receives access.

The platform needed to support the logic behind purchasing access for someone else and connecting that gifted access to the correct recipient experience.

This feature helped create another acquisition channel for the product.

Gift subscriptions supported:

For a learning and lifestyle platform, gifting can be a strong commercial feature because the product can be bought not only for oneself, but also for someone else.

The platform also included a localized currency system.

This was important because SaunaHacker was not built only as a static local product. The platform needed to present pricing in a way that made sense for users across different regions.

Localized currency handling helped improve the purchase experience and made the platform more prepared for broader market usage.

The system supported:

Pricing and checkout are critical parts of a subscription product.

If users see pricing in an unfamiliar currency or if the payment experience feels disconnected from their region, conversion can suffer.

The localized currency system helped reduce that friction.

SaunaHacker also needed an internal administration layer.

A learning platform cannot be managed efficiently only through the database or external tools.

The team needs a clear way to manage content, videos, categories, subtitles, chapters, users, subscriptions, and operational settings.

The administration system helped make the platform easier to operate after launch.

The admin layer supported:

This was important because the product needed to be maintainable, not just functional.

A strong admin system gives the platform owner more control and reduces technical dependency for everyday operations.

The technical foundation of SaunaHacker was built to support a modern SaaS-style learning product.

The stack included:

The architecture needed to connect multiple moving parts into one stable product:

The platform architecture connected:

This made the project significantly more complex than a typical website build.

The value was in connecting all of these systems into one coherent product experience.

The cooperation included:

The project combined web development, SaaS architecture, payments, AI automation, video infrastructure, learning workflows, localization, content management, and product operations.

SaunaHacker gained a strong technical foundation for a modern AI-powered learning platform.

The platform became more than a place to watch educational videos.

It became a full digital product with user accounts, paid access, personal notes, personal video uploads, admin video management, video categories, adaptive video playback, subtitle workflows, chapter generation, family plans, gift subscriptions, localized pricing, and internal administration.

The AI subtitle translation workflow helped make the content more accessible across seven languages.

Automatic chapter generation made videos easier to navigate and more useful as learning materials.

Mux-based video infrastructure helped support smoother playback with automatic video quality.

Stripe integration made subscriptions, payments, family plans, and gifting possible as part of the platform’s monetization system.

The administration system gave the platform a stronger operational layer, making it easier to manage videos, subtitles, chapters, categories, users, and subscriptions.

The result was a connected SaaS-style learning platform, not just a video library, but a product infrastructure supporting education, payments, AI, localization, video delivery, personal learning workflows, and future growth.

Modern learning platforms need more than good content.

They need a product system that supports access control, payments, video performance, localization, user learning workflows, administration, and scalable operations.

For SaunaHacker, I helped build that system, from the technical foundation and subscription logic to AI-powered subtitle translation, automatic chapter generation, adaptive video delivery, personal notes, video uploads, family plans, gift subscriptions, localized currency handling, and internal administration.

The project shows how educational content can become a structured digital product when the right platform architecture is built around it.