course-notes

Turn Canvas / Ed course material into structured study notes — an Agent Skill for Trae, Cursor, and similar hosts.

Not another PDF summarizer. It locks in the full loop: find material → fetch → OCR image pages → fixed note template → delete temp files. After install, just say wk7 总结 / summarize week 7.

English demo notes · 中文说明 · MIT License

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30-second pitch

You give	You get
INFO1112 wk5 总结 (or drop a PDF)	Overview → sectioned notes with page ids → method templates → comparison tables → cheat sheet → exam traps → homework links
Pure diagram pages	Marked unread — never invented
Temp PDF / png	Deleted after read; notes only under ~/notes/

Math is Unicode plain text (a ∈ ℤ, a ∣ b), not unrendered LaTeX. PPT method lines (e.g. To disprove … we need a counterexample) must appear verbatim in the notes.

Before → After (real Tier-0 run on OSTEP Ch.4 — denser textbook left, structured notes right):

Full notes: examples/demo/after-notes.md · how to reproduce: examples/demo/

Modes

Mode	Trigger	Output
summary	wk5 总结 / summarize Lab 6	Structured notes for that week
explain	explain <slide URL>	Page / slide walkthrough
answer	回答每个问题并解释代码	Per-question answers + line-by-line code
quiz	出题考我 / quiz me	Practice questions + answers

Setup (≤ 3 steps)

Step 1 (required) install skill  →  works immediately on a dropped PDF
Step 2 (optional) add tokens     →  auto-fetch from Canvas / Ed
Step 3            just talk      →  "INFO1112 wk5 总结"

Tier	What you do	What you get
Tier 0 local	Install skill only	Summarize / explain / answer from files you provide
Tier 1 half-auto	Canvas or Ed token	Auto-fetch that side
Tier 2 full-auto	Both tokens	Course discovery + fetch + notes

Tier 0 is real: structured notes, OCR, and temp cleanup need no tokens.

Step 1 — Install the skill

git clone https://github.com/OceanHu123/course-notes-skill.git ~/Projects/course-notes-skill

Link or copy the course-notes/ folder into your skills path:

Host	Skills directory	Example
Trae CN	~/.trae-cn/skills/	ln -s ~/Projects/course-notes-skill/course-notes ~/.trae-cn/skills/course-notes
Trae	~/.trae/skills/	same, different path
Cursor	~/.cursor/skills/ (or project .cursor/skills/)	ln -s ~/Projects/course-notes-skill/course-notes ~/.cursor/skills/course-notes
Other Agent Skill hosts	see product docs	folder must contain SKILL.md

# symlink (live updates from the repo)
ln -s ~/Projects/course-notes-skill/course-notes ~/.trae-cn/skills/course-notes

# or copy (decoupled)
cp -R ~/Projects/course-notes-skill/course-notes ~/.trae-cn/skills/

Restart the IDE / agent. The description in SKILL.md is the trigger. If a symlink is ignored, use copy.

Step 2 (optional) — Tokens

Credentials stay in MCP servers (not in this skill), so the repo can stay public:

Goal	Need	Where
Canvas modules / lecture PDFs	CANVAS_API_URL + CANVAS_API_TOKEN	Canvas → Account → Settings → + New Access Token. URL like https://<school>.instructure.com/api/v1
Ed lessons / slides	ED_API_TOKEN	see ed-mcp

MCP projects:

• Canvas → vishalsachdev/canvas-mcp
• Ed → januarharianto/ed-mcp

Put tokens in each project's .env, register MCP in your IDE (Trae example: ~/Library/Application Support/Trae CN/User/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "canvas": { "command": "/absolute/path/run-canvas-mcp.sh", "args": [], "env": {} },
    "ed":     { "command": "/absolute/path/run-ed-mcp.sh",     "args": [], "env": {} }
  }
}

Default credential paths: ~/Projects/mcp/{canvas-mcp,ed-mcp}/.env. Override with MCP_DIR — do not edit the skill.

Sanity check (also lists courses on your account):

python3 ~/.trae-cn/skills/course-notes/scripts/check_env.py

(Cursor: ~/.cursor/skills/course-notes/....) Prints your Tier and what is missing.

Step 3 — Use it

INFO1112 wk5 总结
wk7 总结
explain https://edstem.org/au/courses/36385/lessons/109426/slides/808037
https://edstem.org/au/courses/36385/lessons/109426/slides/809827 回答每个问题并解释代码
出题考我 Week 5 的内容

Notes land in ~/notes/<course-code>/<topic>.md (outside your code repos). Temp files under /tmp are deleted after use.

Dependencies

Use	Requirement
Read PDF	python3 + PyMuPDF (import fitz). python3 -m pip install --user pymupdf if needed
OCR image pages	tesseract if present → else macOS Vision (swiftc) → else mark unread
Auto-fetch (optional)	Canvas / Ed MCP + tokens

Teaching the skill your courses

The material index is a cache, not a prerequisite. Say INFO1112 wk5 总结; the skill matches against your Canvas / Ed enrollments and appends the index.

Index file: course-notes/references/material-index.md (ids only). A USYD INFO1112 sample is included for reference — your ids come from your account.

python3 ~/.trae-cn/skills/course-notes/scripts/discover_course.py <COURSE-CODE>

Prints a paste-ready Markdown block. Course codes do not encode the school; school comes from the platform (realm / Canvas host). No match → say so; never invent ids.

How it works

check_env → resolve course → fetch → extract text → OCR → write notes → cleanup

See README.zh-CN.md for the detailed Chinese walkthrough of each script, or browse course-notes/scripts/.

Layout

course-notes-skill/
├── LICENSE
├── README.md                 ← you are here (English)
├── README.zh-CN.md
├── examples/
│   ├── demo/                 ← OSTEP before/after for screenshots
│   └── notes/                ← extra anonymized sample
└── course-notes/             ← install this folder into skills/
    ├── SKILL.md
    ├── references/
    └── scripts/

Limits

• Only courses on your account (no global catalog).
• Pure diagrams: OCR is weak; skill marks unread instead of guessing.
• Fully scanned PDFs → all pages image-only; OCR is slow and noisy.
• Canvas API coverage varies (403/404 common); module → download_course_file is the reliable path.
• Ed rejects requests without User-Agent (scripts already set one).

License

MIT. Demo PDF is from OSTEP (not redistributed in git) — https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/