Certificates

The Certificates module turns one designed template into a shareable certificate for every participant — name, placement and stats filled in from the final standings, rendered server-side as a PNG. It’s built to leave the platform: a certificate on a competitor’s LinkedIn is an impression for your event.

Certificates are an optional module, enabled per competition (on by default) under Settings → Modules. Authoring needs the manage_certificates permission — held by Judge and Administrator. The module builds on competitions, scoring and notifications (all core), and uploaded backgrounds, image elements, custom fonts and the bulk export all need object storage; a solid-colour or preset background needs none.

Design the template

The Certificates settings tab is a WYSIWYG designer over a fixed landscape-A4 canvas. Every element is positioned as a percentage of the canvas, so a template scales cleanly to the final render.

Background is one of three kinds:

• Solid colour — the default; pick any hex.
• Preset — a code-drawn style (Signal, Aurora, Mesh, Circuit, Terminal, Classic, Elegant, Modern, Dark), each with two adjustable colours (an accent for the trim and a base for the ground).
• Uploaded image — your own artwork, scaled to cover the canvas (landscape ≈ A4, up to a few MB). Needs object storage.

Elements you drag onto the canvas:

• Token — a live value from the standings (see below).
• Text — fixed wording (“Certificate of Achievement”).
• Image — a logo or seal (needs object storage).

Each text and token element carries its own font, size, colour, alignment (left / center / right) and bold / italic.

Tokens

Tokens are filled in per recipient at render time:

Token	Renders
recipient_name	The participant (or team) name
competition_name	The competition’s name
placement	3rd place for a scorer; Participant for anyone who didn’t score
points	Final points, comma-grouped
solve_count	Challenges solved
bracket	The recipient’s division, if any
participant_count	Total entrants on the board
competition_end_date	The competition’s end date
issue_date	The date the certificate was rendered

A participant counts as a scorer if they have any points or any solve — everyone else renders as Participant, so a whole-field participation certificate reads correctly.

Fonts

The designer ships a set of bundled, open-licensed fonts (a serif is the default). You can also upload your own brand font (TTF/OTF, a few MB each, up to twenty per competition) — you’re responsible for holding the redistribution rights to any font you upload.

Portable templates

A template exports to a single self-contained JSON file (with any uploaded background, images and fonts embedded), and imports the same way — so you can carry a house style between competitions or installs.

Choose who gets one

The recipient rule decides the audience:

• Everyone — every participant (the default).
• Scorers only — just those who put points on the board.

Release

Nothing is downloadable until you release. Three modes:

• Manual — you click Release when standings are final.
• On competition end — released automatically when the competition ends.
• End + delay — a set number of minutes after the end (up to a week), handy for a final review window.

On release, every recipient gets a bell notification (“Your certificate is ready” — it ignores an automations mute, since it’s personal) and a one-time celebratory prompt. Release is idempotent: a competition releases once, and re-running the action changes nothing.

Distribution

• Self-serve — participants download their PNG from Profile → Certificates and from a card on the results / scoreboard page.
• Bulk export — organisers kick off an async ZIP of every recipient’s certificate, delivered as a short-lived download link when it’s ready.

Nothing per-recipient is ever stored: every certificate is a pure function of (template × that recipient’s standing) and renders on demand, so there are no stale files to clean up and a correction to the template is instantly reflected in every download.

The footer mark

Every certificate carries an understated flagpost.io footer mark, composited into the bottom margin by the server. Because the client only ever receives the finished PNG, the mark can’t be moved, hidden or styled away — the certificate is designed to be shared, and it carries its origin with it.

Automation & audit

Releasing emits certificate.released, and saving the template emits certificate.template_updated — both usable as automation triggers and recorded in the audit log. See the event catalogue.