7-Stage Pipeline

The Course Creator pipeline transforms a course.yaml manifest into a fully deployed GitHub Pages course website through seven sequential stages, each building on the outputs of the previous.

Pipeline Overview

Slides → .tex files

beamer-slide-creator full-lecture-generator mini-lecture-generator

Charts → .py scripts → .pdf charts

Galleries → .pdf → .png → gallery HTML

Lectures → lecture HTML pages

Quizzes → quiz HTML pages

Projects → project track pages

Deploy → GitHub Pages site

Stage Details

1 Slides course-creator-slides.md — 278 lines

Inputs

course.yaml manifest, lecture topics defined in manifest

Outputs

slides/{lecture}/ directories containing .tex files for each variant

Process

Creates a master content plan, then generates six .tex file variants per lecture using the triad sub-skills (beamer-slide-creator, full-lecture-generator, mini-lecture-generator). Variants produced: full (~30 slides), compact (~15 slides), extended (~45 slides), teaser (5 slides), standalone-mini (10 slides), and practice.

Quality Gates

All .tex files compile without errors
Slide count within variant target ±20%

Sub-skills

beamer-slide-creator (1736 lines) full-lecture-generator (900 lines) mini-lecture-generator (583 lines)

2 Charts course-creator-charts.md — 180 lines

Inputs

Lecture topics, chart auto-derivation results from manifest analysis

Outputs

charts/{lecture}/ directories with .py scripts and compiled .pdf chart outputs

Process

Generates chart_styles.py containing the V4_COLORS palette shared across all charts. Creates individual matplotlib/numpy chart scripts for each required visualization, then compiles each script to produce PDF output.

Quality Gates

All scripts execute without errors
PDF files generated successfully for all charts

3 Galleries course-creator-galleries.md — 491 lines

Inputs

PDF slide files from Stage 1 (slides/{lecture}/)

Outputs

galleries/{lecture}/ directories with .png slide images and gallery.html

Process

Converts PDF slides to PNG images using pdftoppm or ImageMagick as the conversion backend. Generates gallery HTML pages with a built-in lightbox viewer for full-size slide inspection.

Quality Gates

All PDFs successfully converted to PNG
Gallery pages render correctly in browser
Lightbox viewer is functional

4 Lectures course-creator-lectures.md — 695 lines

Inputs

Slide content (Stage 1), charts (Stage 2), gallery pages (Stage 3), course.yaml

Outputs

lectures/{lecture}.html files, one per lecture

Process

Creates HTML lecture pages with section-colored navigation bars, KaTeX math rendering for all equations, inline CSS (~130 rules per page), and download links to the compiled PDF variants. Each page integrates embedded chart images and links to the slide gallery.

Quality Gates

KaTeX renders all math expressions correctly
Section colors match specification in manifest
All download links point to valid PDF files

5 Quizzes course-creator-quizzes.md — 329 lines

Inputs

Lecture content from Stage 1, quiz configuration from course.yaml manifest

Outputs

quizzes/{lecture}-quiz.html files, one per lecture

Process

Generates dual-tier quizzes: standard multiple-choice questions for recall and comprehension, plus advanced questions aligned to Bloom's taxonomy levels (analysis, evaluation, synthesis). Creates interactive HTML pages with JavaScript-powered answer checking.

Quality Gates

All questions have exactly one marked correct answer
checkAnswers() JavaScript function operates correctly
Bloom's taxonomy levels are appropriate to question complexity

6 Projects course-creator-projects.md — 613 lines

Inputs

Project definitions from course.yaml manifest, lecture associations from Stage 1

Outputs

projects/{project}.html files, one per project track

Process

Creates project track HTML pages featuring lecture pill navigation color-coded by module, an auto-generated grading rubric, and full description sections. Assigns a difficulty badge based on the project configuration in the manifest.

Quality Gates

Lecture pills link correctly to corresponding lecture pages
Rubric is complete with all grading criteria
Difficulty badge accurately reflects manifest configuration

7 Deploy course-creator-deploy.md — 301 lines

Inputs

All generated content from Stages 1–6

Outputs

Complete deployable website; GitHub repository with Pages enabled and CI/CD workflow

Process

Copies all compiled PDFs to the downloads/ directory, generates the index.html landing page listing all lectures and projects, creates the GitHub repository, configures GitHub Pages, and sets up a GitHub Actions CI/CD workflow for automated rebuilds on push.

Quality Gates

All internal links resolve correctly
GitHub Pages build completes successfully
Index page lists all lectures and projects

Stage Dependencies

The table below shows which stages must complete before a given stage can begin, and which stages are unblocked once it finishes.

Stage	Depends On	Blocks
1 — Slides	None	2, 3, 4, 5, 6
2 — Charts	1 (topics)	4
3 — Galleries	1 (PDFs)	4, 7
4 — Lectures	1, 2, 3	7
5 — Quizzes	1 (content)	7
6 — Projects	1 (content)	7
7 — Deploy	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6	None

Error Recovery

The pipeline tracks progress in a course-state.json file. If any stage fails, you can resume from the failed stage without re-running earlier stages.

State File Format

{
  "course": "Blockchain",
  "started": "2026-01-15T10:30:00Z",
  "stages": {
    "slides":    { "status": "complete", "completed_at": "2026-01-15T10:45:00Z" },
    "charts":    { "status": "complete", "completed_at": "2026-01-15T11:02:00Z" },
    "galleries": { "status": "failed",   "error": "pdftoppm not found" },
    "lectures":  { "status": "pending" },
    "quizzes":   { "status": "pending" },
    "projects":  { "status": "pending" },
    "deploy":    { "status": "pending" }
  }
}

Recovery Procedure

1.Identify the failed stage from course-state.json (status: "failed")
2.Resolve the underlying error (e.g., install pdftoppm if missing)
3.Re-run the pipeline skill — it will automatically resume from the failed stage, preserving all previous outputs
4.To force a full re-run of a specific stage, delete that stage's entry from course-state.json before re-running

Note: Previous stage outputs are always preserved on disk. Re-running a stage overwrites only its own outputs and updates its entry in course-state.json.

Output Directory Structure

All generated files are written under the course short-name directory defined in course.yaml.

{course-short-name}/ ├── slides/ │ ├── lecture-01/ │ │ ├── lecture-01-full.tex │ │ ├── lecture-01-compact.tex │ │ └── ... (extended, teaser, standalone-mini, practice) │ └── lecture-02/ ├── charts/ │ ├── lecture-01/ │ │ ├── chart_styles.py │ │ ├── chart-01.py │ │ └── chart-01.pdf │ └── ... ├── galleries/ │ ├── lecture-01/ │ │ ├── slide-001.png │ │ ├── slide-002.png │ │ └── gallery.html │ └── ... ├── lectures/ │ ├── lecture-01.html │ └── ... ├── quizzes/ │ ├── lecture-01-quiz.html │ └── ... ├── projects/ │ ├── project-01.html │ └── ... ├── downloads/ │ ├── lecture-01-full.pdf │ └── ... ├── index.html └── course-state.json

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