Exercise Manager

This is a codespace with guidelines for developing and managing GitHub Skills exercises and supportive tooling. It provides:

• Unified settings for consistent styling (like linting).
• Tools for testing transition and grading workflows.
• Guidelines and recommendations for designing exercise steps.
• Copilot instructions and prompts to quickly make first drafts.

Start the Codespace

1. Press the below button to start the Codespace. This may take a few minutes.

   

2. Open the VS Code Command Palette. Run the following command and select the workspace settings file.

   File: Open workspace from file...

   /exercise-manager/exercise-manager.code-workspace

Tip

If you need to work across multiple organizations, you will need to change a few settings.

Make an Exercise

With the help of GitHub Copilot, making a new exercise from scratch can be very quick. Here is a hello world level example. It creates an outline for planning then an actual exercise! 🧑‍🚀

Important

Copilot is good for bootstrapping and refinement. It will make a solid first draft, but it is your responsibility as a human (with feelings and empathy) to ensure the exercise is enjoyable and meets the needs of your learners.

1. Open the Copilot Chat panel and ensure you are in Agent mode.

2. Use the following Copilot prompt to create a draft exercise outline.

   

   /create-exercise-outline
   Make an exercise to teach the fundamentals of Git and version control.
   Assume no prior version control experience.
   Put it in the `/workspaces/repos/` folder.
   

   💡 Tip: You can ask Copilot to save this outline as an issue on a repository. Alternately, Copilot can review notes from an existing issue and restructure it.

3. Review and refine the draft outline.

   💡 Tip: This may seem boring, but a few extra minutes here will make the draft exercise from Copilot much better.

4. Use the following Copilot prompt to create an actual exercise.

   

   /bootstrap-exercise-from-outline
   

5. Review and refine the draft exercise. 🧐

   💡 Tip: We are working on prompts to help develop a draft. If you have ideas, please open a new feature issue! 🧑‍🚀

6. Ask Copilot to review the exercise for common issues.

   

   /review-exercise
   

7. Test it with your friends and coworkers to make it awesome! 😎

8. Publish it and enjoy! 🚀

Deeper Exercise Development

Please see the Skills docs for the full guidelines on planning, design, testing, and maintenance.

Contributing

We are very open to contributions and enhancements from the community! 🧑‍🚀

Please feel free to create an issue or submit a pull request.