Building a Class Catalog: Programs, Curriculum, and Session Materialization

Catalog Work Happens Before the First Registration

Operators rush to "get signup live" and skip catalog discipline. Then week three arrives and trainers disagree what session four was supposed to cover.

A class catalog answers: what programs exist, what skills and homework each program promises, how cohorts inherit that curriculum, and what schedule owners see after publish.

Program Layer: Delivery Model and Curriculum

Set delivery model to Group Class on the program. Attach curriculum skills and homework templates — manually or from a preset like Puppy Kindergarten. When a dog enrolls through the cohort, per-skill progress seeds from the program template the same way board-and-train does.

That reuse is deliberate. Class is not a separate product silo. It is another path into the same skill library and owner homework loop.

Cohort Layer: Schedule and Publish

Create a cohort with start date, session count, capacity, price, and optional age window. Choose class days — single weekday or multi-weekday (Tue/Thu). Publish materializes dated session rows: no recurrence engine, concrete rows staff can edit per holiday or weather cancel.

Publish guardrails warn when price is zero or puppy age window is missing. Warnings, not walls — but the desk sees risk before Instagram goes live.

Why Materialized Sessions Matter

Facilities need to move one session for a holiday without breaking an abstract recurrence rule. They need to cancel week four while keeping week five. Materialized rows match how real schedules drift.

Trainers see a numbered list. Owners see dates. Attendance (when you add it) attaches to a specific session id — not "the third Tuesday in theory."

Setup vs Daily Ops

Org admins define programs and publish cohorts. Floor staff work the roster board: seat fill, session edits, cancel-and-refund. Splitting permissions keeps catalog quality high without bottling routine work behind one login.

Concrete Example

An Acme-style org enables training, applies the Puppy Kindergarten preset on a new group-class program, and publishes a Thursday cohort with min age eight weeks and max sixteen at start. Six session rows appear. Venue shows Riverside Dog Park for owners; administrative location stays the kennel for tax and timezone.

Registration is not open in this story — but the catalog is ready. That ordering — program, curriculum, cohort, publish — is what prevents "we opened signup and nothing was wired."

Links in the Stack

Dog training class software is the pillar for cohort operations. Dog training documentation software and dog training progress tracking software explain what happens after dogs are in the room — the same spine class shares with every delivery model.