Getting started

Your first course, from a blank page to a published website. The loop is short: create, author, preview, publish — and you can stop and come back at any point.

The shape of the work

Five steps: create, author, preview, publish, and list publiclyA left-to-right flow — create a package, author its documents, preview them, publish to a live website, and (optionally) list it publicly on Discover. Publish and the final list-publicly step are in copper because each is a deliberate choice you approve.
Create a package, author its documents, preview them, publish to a live site, and — optionally — list it publicly. The last two are deliberate steps you approve.

You sign in with GitHub — that’s where your materials will live, so they stay yours. Everything after that speaks teaching, not tooling.

1 · Create a package

From your workspace, give your course a title, choose what it calls its units (chapter, module, week…), and pick a license. That’s it — the package opens as a trial, saved in Alembic with nothing on GitHub yet. You can work as long as you like before publishing.

2 · Author the blueprint, then the documents

Start with the blueprint — a concept map of what you’ll teach and an assessment guide for how you’ll judge it. It’s plain text and quick to write (see Documents & collections). From there, the study guide and the rest of the course materials are assembled, with AI doing the careful editing. You review and decide what’s ready.

3 · Preview

At any time, preview the student-facing pages exactly as they’ll appear once published — so there are no surprises. Nothing is public until you choose to publish.

4 · Publish

When you’re ready, publish. Alembic moves your course into your own space on GitHub — the account you signed in with — where GitHub Pages publishes it as a website you own. Publishing is deliberate and always needs your explicit approval; nothing goes out on its own. See Publishing for what happens and what you get.

5 · Share it (optional)

Publishing makes your course a live website, but it doesn’t put it on the map. To let other educators find and adapt your work, choose List publicly — a separate, deliberate step that adds your course (or a single asset) to Discover, the public index. You decide what goes on the market, and you can unlist at any time. More in Share & adapt.