fix(new-course): cap lessons at 20 minutes, not 60 (DOJ-6641) - #38
fix(new-course): cap lessons at 20 minutes, not 60 (DOJ-6641)#38lapc506 wants to merge 1 commit into
Conversation
The skill prompted `Estimated minutes (15-60 típico)`. The Pathways course-sizing rule published today in the instructor manual is 3-20, aiming at 5-10. The prompt's upper bound was triple the ceiling, so an author following the tool landed outside the rule while doing exactly what it asked. Four prompts corrected: - Lesson minutes: 15-60 -> 3-20, aim 5-10, 20 a hard ceiling. - Modules: no required count. They group only when enough lessons go together; under 8 lessons usually needs none. The old prompt assumed 8-12 modules for a 30-50h course, which describes a different product than the one being built. - Module hours: derived from the lessons rather than set independently. - Lessons per module unchanged (4-7, max 9), plus the 5-lesson floor PER COURSE. No logic, no schema, no migration of already-generated courses. WHY THIS EXISTED. The numbers were not invented for the manual — they already lived here, as prompts to a generator. Dojo's course standards were instructions to a tool rather than policy a human could read, so nobody could disagree with them and nobody had. Writing them down for instructors is what exposed the one that was wrong. Courses generated under the old range are untouched, and nobody has measured how many exceed 20 minutes. Worth its own issue before an instructor asks why the course next door does not follow the rule. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
![dojo-code-reviewer[bot]](https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/in/3092887?s=60&v=4){kind=small}
There was a problem hiding this comment.
✅ Approved
Approved — no findings. Confidence: 5.00/5.00.
Walkthrough
main directly. Per the repository's GitFlow standards, features and fixes should target develop first before merging into main. This warning is informational only and does not block approval based on the code changes.
Review Summary
This PR updates the guided dialogue prompt in skills/new-course/SKILL.md to match the newly established Pathways microlearning course-sizing standards (DOJ-6641).
I reviewed skills/new-course/SKILL.md to ensure correct framing, accurate duration metrics, proper Spanish language tildes/accentuation, and alignment with CLAUDE.md rules.
Safety Rationale:
The updates are entirely prose-based prompt instructions within skills/new-course/SKILL.md. They modify no executable code, JSON schemas, or structural metadata, posing zero regression or integration risk to the runtime.
Approved — no findings.
1 participant
Closes DOJ-6641 — https://linear.app/dojo-coding/issue/DOJ-6641
The defect
skills/new-course/SKILL.mdpromptedEstimated minutes (15-60 típico). The Pathways course-sizing rule published today in the instructor manual is 3-20, aiming at 5-10.The upper bound was triple the ceiling, so an author following the tool landed outside the rule while doing exactly what the tool asked. And because the toolkit is what generates courses, leaving it alone keeps producing content the manual declares out of spec.
What changed — four prompts, no logic
15-60 típico3-20, aim 5-10, 20 a hard ceiling8-12 para cursos de 30-50h2-5 típico4-7, máximo 9The module change matters as much as the minutes:
8-12 modules for a 30-50h coursedescribes a different product than the one being built. A course of five 5-minute lessons is now explicitly valid.No logic, no schema, no migration.
Why the rule changed
Pathways PO decision, 2026-08-07: 60 minutes is too long for the attention span we teach to; aim at microlearning. With a floor of 3-5 minutes so a "lesson" is not a note, and a 5-lesson minimum so a course has a beginning, accumulation, and a different end.
The part worth reading
These numbers were not invented for the manual — they already lived here, as prompts to a generator. Dojo's course standards were instructions to a tool rather than policy a human could read, which is why nobody had ever disagreed with them: there was nowhere to disagree.
Writing them down for instructors is what exposed the one that was wrong. That is the argument for the manual existing, and it is also the argument for this file not being the source of truth for a human-facing rule.
Not in scope
Courses already generated under the old range are untouched, and nobody has measured how many existing lessons exceed 20 minutes. That measurement is worth its own issue — before an instructor asks why the course next door does not follow the rule the manual just handed them.
Created by Claude Code on behalf of @lapc506