canvas-course-builder

canvas-course-builder is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from jasp-nerd/courseforge. It costs 109 tokens per session (828 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A tool for turning a syllabus, course outline, teaching materials, or course idea into a Canvas course. Canvas is an online learning system; the result can include modules, pages, assignments, quizzes, and discussions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create a complete course with weekly or topic-based modules, assessments, grading groups, dates, page content, and an optional downloadable Common Cartridge file for import into Canvas.
Why use it?
It removes the repetitive work of transferring course plans into Canvas and checks the course structure before building it.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jasp-nerd/courseforge/canvas-course-builder
Any agent
npx skills add jasp-nerd/courseforge --skill canvas-course-builder
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jasp-nerd/courseforge

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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-course-builder

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jasp-nerd/courseforge/canvas-course-builder.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jasp-nerd/courseforge/canvas-course-builder)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jasp-nerd/courseforge/canvas-course-builder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jasp-nerd/courseforge/canvas-course-builder.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 109 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 828 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00109 $0.00828
Opus 5 $0.00055 $0.00414
Sonnet 5 $0.00022 $0.00166
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00083

Measured 4d ago against content hash 39fa3bb4bb1f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

canvas-course-builder 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 4d 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-course-builder/SKILL.md · 44 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 44 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

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. 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.

Read the full file on GitHub · 44 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 4d ago First seen · 44 lines · 109 tokens per session scan A 39fa3bb4bb1f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

canvas-course-builder is a skill published in the GitHub repository jasp-nerd/courseforge (2 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 109 tokens to every session and 828 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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