Curriculum Designer Skill

Turn your rough course ideas into structured curriculums and technical delivery plans.

The curriculum-designer is a powerful agentic skill for Gemini CLI and Claude Code. It acts as an expert instructional designer, interviewing you to build high-quality educational content and then generating the technical roadmap to build it.

📦 Installation & Setup

Choose your platform below:

Option A: Gemini CLI

Prerequisites

1. Install Node.js: Download and install the latest LTS version from nodejs.org.
2. Install Gemini CLI:

   npm install -g @google/gemini-cli

Install the Skill

npm install -g @weihaoqu/curriculum-designer-skill

Register with Gemini CLI

# From your local NPM installation (Best for Mac)
gemini skills install $(npm root -g)/@weihaoqu/curriculum-designer-skill --scope user

# Or directly from GitHub (Works for Windows & Mac)
gemini skills install https://github.com/weihaoqu/gemini-curriculum-designer --scope user

Verify Installation

gemini skills list

You should see curriculum-designer in the output.

Activate in Session

If you are already in a chat session, reload the skills:

/skills reload

Option B: Claude Code

Prerequisites

1. Install Claude Code: Follow the installation guide at claude.ai/claude-code.

Install the Skill

Method 1: Via NPM (Recommended)

npm install -g @weihaoqu/curriculum-designer-skill

The skill is automatically installed to ~/.claude/skills/ during npm install.

If you need to reinstall manually:

curriculum-designer-install

Method 2: Manual Download

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
curl -o ~/.claude/skills/curriculum-designer.md https://raw.githubusercontent.com/weihaoqu/gemini-curriculum-designer/main/SKILL.md

Verify Installation

Start a new Claude Code session and the skill will be available. You can ask:

Help me design a curriculum for [your topic]

🧠 How It Works

The skill adapts to your situation—whether creating from scratch or enhancing existing materials.

Two Modes

Agent: What would you like to do?

       [Create new curriculum from scratch]
       [Enhance existing course materials]
       [Update outdated content with latest practices]
       [Add new delivery format to existing curriculum]

Mode A: Enhance Existing Materials

Already have a course? The skill becomes your upgrade assistant:

User: "I have slides from my 2022 Python course. Help me update it."

Agent: [Reads your existing materials]
       [Analyzes content inventory]
       [Researches what's changed since 2022]

       ## Course Analysis
       ✅ Current: Data types, functions, OOP basics
       ⚠️ Needs update: Package management (pip → uv/poetry)
       ❌ Outdated: Python 3.8 examples (now at 3.12)
       💡 Missing: Type hints, async/await, match statements

       ## What's New in Python (2024-2025)
       🆕 Pattern matching is now widely adopted
       🆕 Type hints are expected in production code
       ⚠️ setup.py is deprecated; use pyproject.toml

       Which enhancements would you like?
       [Update outdated content] [Add new modules] [Refresh examples]
       [Add new delivery format] [Enhance assessments]

Mode B: Create New Curriculum

Starting fresh? The skill researches, designs, and builds:

User: "I want to create a course on Kubernetes for DevOps engineers."

Agent: [Researches latest K8s trends, tools, certifications]

       ## Topic Landscape: Kubernetes (2025)
       Current Trends: GitOps, Platform Engineering, AI/ML workloads
       Essential Tools: Helm, ArgoCD, Crossplane
       Certifications: CKA, CKAD, CKS

       [Proposes complete modules with lessons, activities, assessments]
       [Approve] [Modify] [Start over]

Assessment Design

The skill generates complete, ready-to-use assessments:

| Type | What You Get | |------|--------------| | Quizzes | Questions, answer keys, explanations, rubrics | | Labs | Instructions, starter code, grading criteria, solutions | | Projects | Milestones, deliverables, detailed rubrics | | Peer Reviews | Structured feedback forms, evaluation criteria |

Agent: Generated assessments.md with:
       - 5 module quizzes (20 questions each)
       - 4 hands-on labs with autograder tests
       - 1 midterm project with milestone rubrics
       - 1 capstone with peer review forms

Delivery Templates

Choose your format and get production-ready templates:

| Format | What's Generated | |--------|-----------------| | Slide Decks | Reveal.js/Markdown slides with speaker notes | | Jupyter Notebooks | Interactive notebooks with exercises and solutions | | LMS Package | Canvas/Moodle-ready export structure | | Video Scripts | Full scripts with timestamps, visuals, B-roll cues | | GitHub Repo | Complete course repository structure |

Agent: Which delivery formats do you need?
       [Interactive Web App] [Slide Decks] [Jupyter Notebooks]
       [LMS Package] [Video Scripts] [GitHub Repository]

User: Slides + Jupyter Notebooks

Agent: [Generates slide deck for each module]
       [Creates interactive notebooks with exercises]
       [Provides setup instructions for both]

🏆 Case Study: Building the "CS336 Portal"

We used this skill to build a complete course on Program Analysis for Security & Privacy.

The Challenge

We needed to teach complex topics like Static Taint Analysis, Symbolic Execution, and Control-Flow Integrity to advanced students.

The Process

1. Research & Planning: The skill researched current program analysis tools and techniques, suggesting we include modern frameworks like CodeQL alongside traditional theory.
2. Curriculum Design: Approved 9 rigorous modules with rich content—the skill generated complete lesson plans with explanations, exercises, and assessments.
3. Implementation: Chose "Interactive Web App" delivery. The skill generated the full tech stack (Next.js + Monaco Editor + React Flow) and helped build interactive components.

The Result

A fully functional educational portal with:

• Interactive code visualizations
• Hands-on labs (Lattice Visualizer, Cache Simulator)
• Complete curriculum content

👉 View the Implementation: github.com/weihaoqu/paprojectsimplementation

🛠️ Platform-Specific Features

Claude Code (Recommended)

Claude Code unlocks the full potential of this skill:

| Feature | How It Works | |---------|--------------| | Smart Questions | Uses AskUserQuestion for structured, clickable choices | | Topic Research | Uses WebSearch to find latest trends, tools, and resources | | Material Analysis | Reads and analyzes your existing course files | | Complete Proposals | Presents full module designs for approval, not piecemeal questions | | Assessment Generation | Creates quizzes, labs, projects with rubrics and solutions | | Delivery Templates | Generates slides, notebooks, LMS packages, video scripts | | Implementation | Actually builds your course—creates files, writes code, sets up projects |

Gemini CLI

• Uses shorthand notation for quick responses (i, b, a, e, c, s)
• Text-based interview flow
• Research features depend on available tools

Claude API (Advanced)

For programmatic use with the Claude API, the repository includes:

• claude_tool_definition.json: A JSON schema defining the curriculum design tool.
• claude_system_prompt.md: A system prompt containing the pedagogical logic.

You can use these with the Anthropic Workbench or Claude API directly.

Changelog

v1.1.1 (2025-02-03)

• Easy Install for Claude Code - Running npm install -g now automatically installs the skill to ~/.claude/skills/
• Added curriculum-designer-install command for manual reinstallation

v1.1.0 (2025-02-03)

New Features:

• Claude Code Support - Full compatibility with AskUserQuestion, WebSearch, and other Claude Code tools
• Mode A: Enhance Existing Materials - Analyze existing courses, research what's changed, apply targeted updates
• Assessment Templates - Complete templates for quizzes, labs, projects, and peer reviews with rubrics
• Delivery Templates - Production-ready templates for slides, Jupyter notebooks, LMS packages, video scripts, and GitHub repos

Improvements:

• Streamlined workflow with complete module proposals instead of piecemeal questions
• Proactive topic research before curriculum design
• Changelog tracking for course updates

v1.0.x

• Initial release for Gemini CLI
• Basic curriculum design workflow
• Prerequisite and core concept analysis

License

MIT