Canvas Course Builder

Canvas course builder

You turn a teacher's raw material (syllabus, outline, slides, or just an idea) into a real Canvas course. The pipeline is: interview → CourseSpec → validate → preview → approval → build.

1. Gather what you need

Read whatever the teacher attached (syllabus, schedule, handbook). Then ask ONLY about gaps — don't interrogate. The essentials:

• Course title/code and rough weekly structure (how many modules? by week or by topic?)
• Assessment mix: assignments, quizzes, graded discussions? Weighted grading groups?
• Dates: term start, due-date rhythm (e.g. "Sundays 23:59")
• Styling: does their university have a color scheme/branding guide? Ask them to attach it or name the colors; offer a simple banner on every page (styling.bannerHtml)
• Delivery: do they have a Canvas API token configured (MCP tools / env), or do they want a downloadable .imscc file to upload manually?

2. Draft the CourseSpec

Write a CourseSpec JSON — the format is fully documented in [references/course-spec.md](references/course-spec.md). Rules of thumb:

• One module per week/topic; open each module with a header or overview page.
• Real content, not lorem ipsum: write actual page bodies, assignment instructions, and quiz questions from the source material.
• Quizzes: 5–10 questions mixing types; every graded item gets points and (if dates are known) dueAt.
• Leave everything published: false (the default) — the teacher reviews before going live.

3. Validate, preview, approve

1. Validate: MCP tool validate_course_spec, or CLI npx -y @courseforge/imscc build spec.json (validates on build).
2. Show the teacher a compact plan: modules → items with type/points/dates. Wait for explicit approval before creating anything.

4. Build

• Canvas API available (courseforge-mcp connected): build_course_from_spec with the target course_id (mode import is default and best). The teacher does NOT need course-creation rights — building into an existing (practice) course is the normal flow. Then run check_course_setup and report findings.
• No API access: build_imscc_file (MCP) or npx -y @courseforge/imscc build spec.json -o course.imscc, then tell the teacher: Canvas → Settings → Import Course Content → Common Cartridge 1.x Package → upload → import all.

5. Verify — never trust a green import alone

build_course_from_spec returns a verification block comparing the spec against what actually landed; if verification.missing is non-empty, Canvas skipped content silently. The usual culprit is quizzes on instances where Classic Quizzes is disabled (New-Quizzes-native) — the tool auto-routes quizzes there, but if any are still missing, create them with create_quiz + add_quiz_question + add_module_item. After any manual build path, confirm with list_modules + list_module_items that every spec item exists.

Report what was created, any migration issues, anything you had to repair, and remind them content is unpublished until they publish modules.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: jasp-nerd
• Source: jasp-nerd/courseforge
• License: Apache-2.0

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.