Skill Introduction

Overview

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.

Core value

Turns reusable Debugging know-how into an installable skill, helping users complete github, community work faster.

Target users

Developers, testers, and maintainers who handle Debugging tasks in Focus Code.
Teams that already trust workflows or content from mattpocock.
Users who want standardized prompts, steps, or conventions instead of repeating setup work.

Best practices

Read the skill content first to confirm required inputs, expected outputs, and dependencies.
Try it on a small task before relying on it for critical work.
Add project-specific constraints such as coding style, target platform, test expectations, and delivery format.
For external sources, verify the source link, version, and recent maintenance activity.

Best use cases

Tasks related to github, community that need a reusable execution flow.
Converting a community repo, team convention, or personal workflow into day-to-day assistance.
Starting from a proven skill instead of writing prompts or procedures from scratch.

Limits and boundaries

Results depend on the quality of the original skill content and may need human correction.
It does not replace code review, tests, security review, or professional judgment.
External tools, APIs, account permissions, and local dependencies still need separate setup.

Differentiation

Structured around Debugging, making it easier to discover and reuse than loose prompt snippets.
Marked as GitHub, which helps users judge trust and maintenance expectations.
Keeps the original source link available for repository, documentation, or discussion follow-up.
Tagged with github, community, so it can be filtered by concrete task intent.

Install and use

Install

Copy Install Command

focus install scaffold-exercises-a362ec

View source

Detail Preview

SKILL.md

Primary filemarkdown4 KB

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"

scaffold exercises