A curriculum knowledge graph that makes programme data queryable — and keeps you audit-ready.
Professional curricula are exhaustively documented but not queryable. Vertex models the curriculum as a graph you can ask questions of in plain language, turning quality-assurance and compliance checks that take weeks into ones that take minutes.
What it is
Professional curricula are among the most heavily documented things a university produces — and among the least queryable. Programme structure, learning outcomes, assessment alignment, regulatory standards, and benchmark statements all exist, but trapped across Word documents, spreadsheets, and module handbooks. Every revalidation cycle, teams rebuild what already exists.
Vertex models the curriculum as a knowledge graph (Neo4j) that becomes the source of truth for that structure, and lets staff interrogate it in natural language through a chat interface — no query language required, and no student data exposed to the AI provider. The thesis is “beyond document management”: documentation becomes operational infrastructure rather than a filing problem.
Vertex is a product of Snapplify, the education-technology company I work with as a partner and consultant. I originated the approach and continue to shape its design and direction with their team; it isn’t something I build on my own.
What it does
Vertex is, first, a quality-assurance and compliance tool for lecturers and programme leads. Questions that take weeks of manual cross-referencing — show me every module with outcomes that aren’t assessed, PSRB and QAA benchmark coverage, assessment-loading heat maps, the change-impact of editing a shared module — return in minutes. The aim is to be continuously audit-ready, rather than scrambling at validation.
That capability also supports the people doing the work. It gives curriculum designers and programme teams a live, legible view of constructive alignment, and surfaces the gaps and orphaned outcomes that are otherwise invisible until an external examiner finds them.
Status
Vertex has been built and validated by domain experts: a College quality lead confirmed it covers “essentially everything he checks” in programme validation, and a Head of Digital Information Services saw it as a potential replacement for several institutional systems. A School pilot was approved in principle by IT and Quality, but is currently paused while colleagues are under pressure from a separate curriculum-transformation programme — not the moment to add another initiative. Snapplify is taking Vertex to market, with me involved as a partner and consultant rather than a solo developer.