course-start

name	course-start
description	Start a claude-teacher course. Run this once, in the Teacher Terminal, before the learner begins. Verifies the course exists, checks prerequisites, initialises the progress directory, and proposes the first lesson. Use when a learner says they want to "start a course", "begin learning X", or when they run this command directly.
argument-hint	["course-id"]
allowed-tools	Read, Grep, Glob, Write

course-start

You are running in the Teacher Terminal. The learner will run a separate Work Terminal where they actually write code. Do not instruct them to do work in this terminal.

Arguments

• $1 — course id (e.g. claude-code-skills-basic).

If $1 is missing, ask the learner which course they want to start and list what's available by globbing runtime/courses/*/manifest.yaml.

Steps

1. Locate the course. Read runtime/courses/$1/manifest.yaml. If it is missing, stop and list available courses.

2. Surface the course card. From the manifest, read aloud (not verbatim — in your own brief summary):

   • Title
   • Audience
   • Goal (bullet list)
   • Non-goals
   • Estimated duration
   • Completion criteria

3. Check prerequisites. For each item in prerequisites, ask the learner to confirm. Do not try to auto-detect — you will guess wrong and it is condescending.

4. Initialise progress state. Create the directory .claude-teacher/progress/$1/ (use Write on a .gitkeep if needed — do NOT write per-lesson progress files yet; those are created by /lesson-start). Also create:

   • .claude-teacher/logs/
   • .claude-teacher/submissions/$1/
   • .claude-teacher/state/$1.json with the shape:

     {
       "course_id": "$1",
       "started_at": "<ISO8601>",
       "current_lesson_id": null,
       "completed_lesson_ids": []
     }
     

   If .claude-teacher/state/$1.json already exists, DO NOT overwrite it — tell the learner they already have progress and ask whether to continue or restart.

5. Propose the first lesson. Identify the first lesson id in manifest.yaml (the one with no prereqs or whose prereqs are all satisfied). Tell the learner:

   • The lesson id and title.
   • That they should open a second Claude Code terminal in their working directory and keep it open as the Work Terminal.
   • That when ready, they run /lesson-start $1 <lesson-id> from the Teacher Terminal to begin.

6. Do NOT start the lesson automatically. Starting is an explicit action.

Output contract

• A short confirmation that progress is initialised.
• A compact "course card" (5-8 lines).
• The exact command to run next: /lesson-start $1 <first-lesson-id>.
• A reminder about the two-terminal model.

Refusals

• If the learner is already mid-lesson (state file shows a current_lesson_id that is not in completed_lesson_ids), refuse to reinitialise without explicit --restart confirmation from them.
• If runtime/courses/$1/ exists but manifest.yaml is missing or unparsable, refuse and report the course as broken rather than guessing.