scaffold-exercises

Use it when:: You're adding a section or exercises to a course repo laid out like the author's AI Hero courses.
It does:: Turns a plan into numbered section and exercise folders, each with problem, solution or explainer subfolders.
You get:: The folders, each with a placeholder readme, passing the course linter and committed with git.
Needs:: A repo linted with ai-hero-cli, the author's course tool, through pnpm.

Built for the author's course repos: it lints with ai-hero-cli and commits.

TL;DR

Built for the author's course repos, where exercises live under exercises/ in numbered folders: a section such as 05-memory-skill-building holds exercises such as 05.02-short-term-memory. Each exercise has at least one of problem/ (the student's workspace, with TODOs), solution/ (the reference code) or explainer/ (concepts only), and each needs a readme.md with real content. You give it a plan, a list of sections and exercises with the parts each needs, and it creates the folders, writes a readme with a title and a description in each, using explainer/ when the plan doesn't say, then runs the course linter, fixes errors until it passes, and commits. It also renumbers or moves exercises. It lays out the structure; writing the exercises is left to you.

Summarizes the skill at 5beb35b.

npx skills add https://github.com/mattpocock/skills --skill scaffold-exercises

skills.sh page Source on GitHub All skills from mattpocock/skills

Weekly Downloads week to Nov 9, 2026

20,233

-22% in 8 weeks

More weekly downloads than 96% of skills

Weekly values

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Total Downloads on skills.sh

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Repo stars mattpocock/skills

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Age published Mar 13, 2026

7 months

Older than 50% of skills

Category	category:writing Articles, docs, internal comms, research write-ups and prose that doesn't read as generated.
Type	type:workflow A multi-step process the agent follows: interview, debug, run a TDD loop, review.
Effect	effect:local Its own steps create or change files, git state or local tools.
Needs	needs:cli A specific command-line tool or desktop app must be installed, such as gh, agent-browser, LibreOffice, Obsidian or a vendor CLI.
Publisher	by:community Everyone else. Unverified vendor claims default to community.
Topics	learning

SKILL.md

From mattpocock/skills at 5beb35b. Checked daily, last changed Oct 20, 2026.

Frontmatter

name: scaffold-exercises
description: Create exercise directory structures with sections, problems, solutions, and explainers that pass linting. Use when user wants to scaffold exercises, create exercise stubs, or set up a new course section.

Scaffold Exercises

Create exercise directory structures that pass pnpm ai-hero-cli internal lint, then commit with git commit.

Directory naming

Sections: XX-section-name/ inside exercises/ (e.g., 01-retrieval-skill-building)
Exercises: XX.YY-exercise-name/ inside a section (e.g., 01.03-retrieval-with-bm25)
Section number = XX, exercise number = XX.YY
Names are dash-case (lowercase, hyphens)

Exercise variants

Each exercise needs at least one of these subfolders:

problem/ - student workspace with TODOs
solution/ - reference implementation
explainer/ - conceptual material, no TODOs

When stubbing, default to explainer/ unless the plan specifies otherwise.

Required files

Each subfolder (problem/, solution/, explainer/) needs a readme.md that:

Is not empty (must have real content, even a single title line works)
Has no broken links

When stubbing, create a minimal readme with a title and a description:

# Exercise Title

Description here

If the subfolder has code, it also needs a main.ts (>1 line). But for stubs, a readme-only exercise is fine.

Workflow

Parse the plan - extract section names, exercise names, and variant types
Create directories - mkdir -p for each path
Create stub readmes - one readme.md per variant folder with a title
Run lint - pnpm ai-hero-cli internal lint to validate
Fix any errors - iterate until lint passes

Lint rules summary

The linter (pnpm ai-hero-cli internal lint) checks:

Each exercise has subfolders (problem/, solution/, explainer/)
At least one of problem/, explainer/, or explainer.1/ exists
readme.md exists and is non-empty in the primary subfolder
No .gitkeep files
No speaker-notes.md files
No broken links in readmes
No pnpm run exercise commands in readmes
main.ts required per subfolder unless it's readme-only

Moving/renaming exercises

When renumbering or moving exercises:

Use git mv (not mv) to rename directories - preserves git history
Update the numeric prefix to maintain order
Re-run lint after moves

Example:

git mv exercises/01-retrieval/01.03-embeddings exercises/01-retrieval/01.04-embeddings

Example: stubbing from a plan

Given a plan like:

Section 05: Memory Skill Building
- 05.01 Introduction to Memory
- 05.02 Short-term Memory (explainer + problem + solution)
- 05.03 Long-term Memory

Create:

mkdir -p exercises/05-memory-skill-building/05.01-introduction-to-memory/explainer
mkdir -p exercises/05-memory-skill-building/05.02-short-term-memory/{explainer,problem,solution}
mkdir -p exercises/05-memory-skill-building/05.03-long-term-memory/explainer

Then create readme stubs:

exercises/05-memory-skill-building/05.01-introduction-to-memory/explainer/readme.md -> "# Introduction to Memory"
exercises/05-memory-skill-building/05.02-short-term-memory/explainer/readme.md -> "# Short-term Memory"
exercises/05-memory-skill-building/05.02-short-term-memory/problem/readme.md -> "# Short-term Memory"
exercises/05-memory-skill-building/05.02-short-term-memory/solution/readme.md -> "# Short-term Memory"
exercises/05-memory-skill-building/05.03-long-term-memory/explainer/readme.md -> "# Long-term Memory"