Scaffold Exercises
SkillDev toolsYour AI can scaffold coding exercises for you, using a set of pre-made engineering skills. Once the skill is added, you can ask for an exercise and have it set up without building it yourself. It comes from Matt Pocock's collection of skills for real engineers.
Use Scaffold Exercises in Claude, ChatGPT or Ahel Desktop
Free. Sign in, add Scaffold Exercises and connect your AI. About a minute.
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Then ask your AI: use the Scaffold Exercises skill
Details
Instructions available. Your AI can read the instructions. Execution depends on the setup they require.
Account requirements not reviewed. Check the skill instructions before use; ahel provides instructions and does not run this skill.
No other account needed.
Add the skill, then ask your AI to scaffold a coding exercise on a topic you want to practice.
What your AI can do with it
- Scaffold new coding exercises when you ask
- Build each exercise using pre-made engineering skills
- Set up exercises that are ready to work through
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by andrebrait/datromtool in .agents/skills/scaffold-exercises/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
Create exercise directory structures that pass pnpm ai-hero-cli internal lint, then commit with git commit.
Directory naming
- Sections:
XX-section-name/insideexercises/(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 TODOssolution/- reference implementationexplainer/- 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 -pfor each path - Create stub readmes - one
readme.mdper variant folder with a title - Run lint -
pnpm ai-hero-cli internal lintto 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/, orexplainer.1/exists readme.mdexists and is non-empty in the primary subfolder- No
.gitkeepfiles - No
speaker-notes.mdfiles - No broken links in readmes
- No
pnpm run exercisecommands in readmes main.tsrequired per subfolder unless it's readme-only
Moving/renaming exercises
When renumbering or moving exercises:
- Use
git mv(notmv) 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"
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 59
- Last commit
- Oct 2026
ahel recommends instead
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- Item type
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- Key
scaffold-exercises- Source
- github.com/andrebrait/datromtool
github.com/andrebrait/datromtool