canvas-discussion-facilitator

canvas-discussion-facilitator is a skill for Claude Code from bruchris/canvas-lms-mcp. It costs 91 tokens per session (1,525 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for managing Canvas, a learning-management system used by schools and courses, through an agent. It covers reading and updating course discussion boards.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find active or unread discussions, read full threads, reply to topics, create topics, and review announcements when you have the required course permissions.
Why use it?
It gathers discussion threads and announcements in one workflow, reducing the need to manually search through course pages and replies.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the canvas-lms-mcp plugin — 16 skills, 5 agents, 2 MCP servers shipped together

Good fit Use it to find active or unread discussions, read full threads, reply to topics, create topics, and review announcements when you have the required course permissions.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bruchris/canvas-lms-mcp/canvas-discussion-facilitator
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add bruchris/canvas-lms-mcp --skill canvas-discussion-facilitator
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bruchris/canvas-lms-mcp

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install canvas-lms-mcp, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills, 5 agents, 2 MCP servers.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for canvas-discussion-facilitator

README.md
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Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bruchris/canvas-lms-mcp/canvas-discussion-facilitator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bruchris/canvas-lms-mcp/canvas-discussion-facilitator/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for canvas-discussion-facilitator

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bruchris/canvas-lms-mcp/canvas-discussion-facilitator"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bruchris/canvas-lms-mcp/canvas-discussion-facilitator.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 91 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,525 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00091 $0.01525
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.00763
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00305
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00153

Measured 12d ago against content hash 35aacdcfa06b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

canvas-discussion-facilitator scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/canvas-discussion-facilitator/SKILL.md · 150 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 150 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Canvas Discussion Facilitator

Educator skill for managing course discussion boards: browse topics, read threaded entries, post replies, create new topics, and monitor announcement activity — all from your agent session.

Prerequisites

  • Canvas MCP server must be running and connected.
  • You must have instructor, TA, or student role in the target course (read access). Creating or updating topics requires instructor or TA role.
  • Student names and post content are visible in output — only run this in a private or educator-only session when reviewing discussion entries.

Tool naming note

get_discussion in canvas-lms-mcp returns the full topic details and inline discussion entries in a single call. There is no separate list_discussion_entries tool — all thread content comes through get_discussion. If you search for list_discussion_entries you will not find it; use get_discussion instead.

Steps

1. Identify the Target Course

Ask the user which course's discussions to work with. Accept a course name, course code, or Canvas ID.

If unclear, call list_discussions with the course ID — it will fail with a 404 if the course ID is wrong, which surfaces the issue early.

2. Choose a Mode

Ask the user what they want to do:

Mode When to use
Browse topics See all active discussion topics at a glance
Read a thread Read the entries in a specific topic
Check announcements View instructor announcements
Post a reply Add an entry to an existing discussion
Create a topic Open a new discussion topic

3A. Browse Topics

Call list_discussions with the course ID. This returns all discussion topics in the course with their title, type (discussion_topic or announcement), reply count, unread count, and posting status.

Present a summary table:

Discussions — [Course Name]

OPEN TOPICS
• "Week 3 Reflection" — 34 replies, 5 unread, posted by Prof. Lee
• "Reading Questions Ch. 4" — 12 replies, 0 unread, posted by TA Park
• "Introduce Yourself" — 28 replies, 0 unread

CLOSED / LOCKED
• "Week 1 Check-in" — 19 replies (locked)

Read the full file on GitHub · 150 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 150 lines · 91 tokens per session scan A 35aacdcfa06b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

canvas-discussion-facilitator is a skill published in the GitHub repository bruchris/canvas-lms-mcp (5 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 91 tokens to every session and 1,525 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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