create-course

Prompt file imported from stevekinney/stevekinney.net (.claude/commands/create-course.md). Copyright stays with the author.

You are creating a new course in the courses/ directory. Each course follows a consistent structure. Your job is to gather the required information from the user and then scaffold the course.

Step 1: Gather Information

Use AskUserQuestion to collect the following from the user. Ask all questions in a single call when possible.

1. Course title — The human-readable title (e.g., "Introduction to Testing", "React Performance").
2. Course slug — The kebab-case directory name (e.g., testing, react-performance). Suggest one derived from the title but let the user override.
3. Course description — A brief description of the course content.
4. Initial sections — Ask for the high-level section names that will appear in index.toml (e.g., "The Basics", "Advanced Topics", "Next Steps"). These are just organizational headers — all lesson files live flat in the course root.
5. Repository URL — Optional link to a practice/lab repository on GitHub.
6. Frontend Masters URL slug — Optional. If this course is on Frontend Masters, the URL path segment (e.g., testing for frontendmasters.com/courses/testing/).

Step 2: Create the Course Directory

Create courses/<slug>/ with the following files:

package.json

{
  "name": "@stevekinney/<slug>",
  "private": true,
  "type": "module",
  "scripts": {
    "manifest": "bun run ../../packages/scripts/generate-course-manifest.ts",
    "build": "bun run manifest"
  }
}

README.md

The main course landing page. Use layout: page in frontmatter.

---
title: <Course Title>
description: >-
  <Course Description>
layout: page
date: <current ISO 8601 date>
modified: '<current ISO 8601 date>'
---

<If Frontend Masters URL is provided:>
The material in this course is intended to go along with the [<Course Title>](https://frontendmasters.com/courses/<fem-slug>/?utm_source=kinney&utm_medium=social&code=kinney) course with [Frontend Masters](https://frontendmasters.com/?utm_source=kinney&utm_medium=social&code=kinney).

<Course description, expanded into a paragraph.>

<If repository URL is provided:>
## Important Things

- [Practice Lab Repository](repository-url)

<Sections from index.toml mirrored here with absolute paths like `/courses/<slug>/lesson-name`>

index.toml

The table of contents file. This file organizes lessons into sections using TOML.

[[section]]
title = "<Section Name>"

[[section.item]]
title = "Lesson Title"
href = "lesson-slug.md"

Items can have optional related links for exercises and solutions:

[[section.item]]
title = "Some Topic"
href = "some-topic.md"

  [[section.item.related]]
  title = "Exercise"
  href = "some-topic-exercise.md"

  [[section.item.related]]
  title = "Solution"
  href = "some-topic-solution.md"

Start with the section headers the user provided. Leave them empty (no lesson links yet) — the user will add lessons later.

Step 3: Register the Workspace Dependency

Add the new course package to applications/website/package.json under "dependencies" (keep alphabetical order):

"@stevekinney/<slug>": "workspace:*"

Then run bun install from the repo root to update the lockfile and verify Turbo picks up the new workspace.

Step 4: Generate the Manifest

After creating the files, run the manifest generation script:

cd courses/<slug> && bun run manifest

Step 5: Confirm

Tell the user what was created and remind them:

• Lesson files are individual .md files placed directly in the course root (flat structure, no subdirectories for sections).
• Each lesson needs frontmatter with title, description, date, and modified fields.
• Optional fields: published (boolean), tags (array of strings).
• Exercises and solutions follow the pattern: topic-exercise.md and topic-solution.md.
• Images go in an assets/ subdirectory.
• After adding lessons, link them in index.toml with relative .md hrefs and in README.md with absolute paths (/courses/<slug>/lesson-slug).
• Run bun run manifest from the course directory to regenerate manifest.json after changes.