Replacing GitHub Classroom: open-source CLI for per-student repos from a roster

[ArchitectingSoftware]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

GitHub Classroom

Hi everyone,

With GitHub Classroom retired, I built a replacement for how I actually used it, and I'm sharing it in case it helps others.

mgc (my-gh-classroom) is a small command-line tool built on the GitHub CLI (gh). It's for a simple model: one GitHub organization per course, one private repository per student for the whole term, and a grader team for instructors and TAs. I've been using it this term for a 52-student networking course at Drexel.

What it does:

• Creates student repos from a CSV roster (e.g. a Canvas survey export). Re-running is safe: existing students are skipped.
• Invites each student, gives the grader team access, adds a starter README linking to your course-info repo, and tags each repo with the student's name and GitHub username as custom properties, so repo names don't expose real names.
• Manages the grader team and tracks pending invitations for students and TAs, with ready-to-paste reminder messages.
• Is a dry run by default: nothing changes until you add --apply.

What it doesn't do: no autograding, no web UI, no assignment templates. If you need those, Classroom 50 or Codio are better fits. mgc is for people who want something small and scriptable.

Prebuilt binaries for macOS, Linux, and Windows are on the Releases page, and GETTING_STARTED.md walks through a first term end to end.

https://github.com/ArchitectingSoftware/my-gh-classroom

It's MIT licensed and my own project, not affiliated with GitHub or my employer. Issues, feedback, and PRs are welcome.

Brian Mitchell, PhD
Drexel University, Computer Science

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