schole¶

schole (σχολή, school) reads a Brightspace (D2L) course site, such as RIT's myCourses, for Claude Code. It reports new announcements and new or updated content since a time, what is due in the next two weeks, and what came due without a submission. You sign in once in a real browser window; after that it reads the site's own REST API headless with that session.

It only reads. Every request is a GET on a fixed allowlist (enrollments, announcements, the content outline, assignment folders, and the student Assignments page for submission state), and anything else is refused before it is sent. It never opens a content page, because Brightspace marks a page read, and its module complete, when you view it. It never types into a sign-in, SSO or Duo page.

Use it when¶

• You ask what is due, what is new in your courses, or whether you missed a deadline.
• You want course announcements without opening the site.

Install¶

/plugin marketplace add ajbarea/techne
/plugin install schole@techne

Needs¶

uv and Playwright's Chromium. On WSL the sign-in window needs WSLg (Windows 11).

Claude Code in the terminal or the desktop app. The plugin ships commands in bin/, and claude.ai and Cowork do not install a plugin that has one (plugin reference).

Set up¶

Ask Claude to run /schole:setup. It follows the setup runbook: it installs the browser and has you sign in once:

!schole-login --site https://mycourses.example.edu --term 2261 --timezone America/New_York

--site is your course site's https origin, --term is text every current course code contains, and --timezone is optional.

Skills¶

epistole's catch-me-up also runs the course sweep when schole is installed, so one catch-up covers mail and courses.

Commands and tools¶

Exit codes: 0 success, 1 a missing or bad setting (schole.toml, --site, --timezone) or a sign-in that did not finish (a closed window, or a login that ran out of time), 2 an unknown option or a --since that is not a number, 3 needs login, 4 the course site failed or the browser could not run (Chromium missing, profile in use), 127 uv is not on PATH. --help on either command lists them with examples.

schole-sweep prints a header line (<site> since <time>: N courses), then for each course an OK or APIFAIL line followed by that course's lines:

Configuration¶

~/.config/schole/schole.toml holds three keys, written by schole-login. An unknown key is an error.

site = "https://mycourses.example.edu"
term = "2261"
timezone = "America/New_York"   # optional, an IANA name

SCHOLE_HOME moves the whole folder, the profile included; it must be absolute or start with ~.

Why the browser¶

Brightspace's API needs an OAuth app your institution registers; students cannot register one. Claude Code's own Chrome integration is not supported under WSL. A browser profile you sign into once, read with GET requests only, works for any student account at any school that runs Brightspace.

Privacy¶

• schole runs on your computer. The browser profile in ~/.config/schole/profile holds your course site's session, including a copy of its session cookies in session-cookies.json (readable by you only) that schole refreshes after each run once the site accepts the session, so the sign-in survives the browser closing. It never leaves the machine; treat the folder like a password.
• session-cookies.json holds only the course site's own session cookies. Cookies set by the sign-in provider are not kept.
• Nothing is sent anywhere but your course site, and the course text it prints goes to the model you already run in Claude Code.
• To sign out here, delete ~/.config/schole/profile, which removes the saved cookies too. This does not end the session on the site's server.

Troubleshooting¶

• needs login, exit 3. The site's session ended. Brightspace ends it after an idle timeout the school sets, and on a password change. A refused cookie restore can also cause it. The line ends with when the site last accepted the session, if it ever did. Run !schole-login.
• Zero courses. The term filter matches no course code. Run !schole-login --site <site> --term <code> with the text your current courses' codes contain.
• APIFAIL <course> :: news:404. That part of that course could not be read; the rest still was. Check it on the site yourself.
• schole: the course site failed (...); try again later. The site did not answer. Exit 4.
• the browser profile is in use; close the schole-login window and try again. Another schole browser is open on the same profile.
• Chromium is not installed for schole; run: .... Run the command it prints. On Linux, if the browser then fails for missing libraries, run uv run --no-project --with playwright==1.63.0 playwright install-deps chromium.
• the browser window closed before the site answered. Run the command again and leave the window open.
• schole: could not restore the saved sign-in or could not save the sign-in. The cookie file could not be read into the browser or written. The next run signs in again if the site's session is gone.
• No window opens on WSL. The login window needs WSLg (Windows 11).