Lesson 05: Export a course

Lesson objectives:

• Match the request phrase to the export format: printable page, PDF, or flashcards.
• Locate the exported files and turn them into a PDF or an Anki deck.
• Judge when an export has gone stale and needs re-running.

Prerequisites: A generated course of your own | Previous << 04 Update a course

The reader lives on your machine. Sometimes the course has to leave it.

A long flight with no laptop. A friend who wants the course but not the setup. A phone flashcard habit that already runs through Anki. The reader can't follow you to any of those places — it serves pages only on your own computer. For that, the skill's last operation turns a course into ordinary files that travel: a single readable page, or a deck of flashcards.

Explanation

Three phrasings, three outcomes¹. "Export this course" produces both formats. "Export to PDF" or "print it" produces the printable page. "Make flashcards" or "turn this into Anki cards" produces the card file. The agent writes the files into an exports folder next to your courses and tells you the exact path¹ — nothing uploads anywhere; export is as local as everything else in this course¹.

The printable page is one HTML file — a web page saved as a file. Double-click it and it opens in your browser, no reader running¹. From there, the browser itself is the PDF factory: Print, then "Save as PDF"¹. The same file works as an offline copy or as a one-file version you send to someone — they need a browser, not the skill.

The card file is a CSV — a plain table file — of the course's glossary, ready for Anki, the spaced-repetition flashcard app¹. In Anki: File, then Import, pick the card file, and map the front and back fields; it becomes a deck¹. One distinction keeps the two review worlds straight: your agent's "quiz me" sessions from lesson 03 run on the local records and include your interaction blocks; an Anki deck is a portable copy of the terms only, useful precisely where the agent isn't — on your phone, offline, inside a habit you already have.

One property of exports catches people later: an export is a snapshot of the course at the moment you ran it¹. It does not watch the course afterward. Change a lesson with a lesson-04 request and the exported page still shows the old text until you export again. The habit that follows is one line: edit, then re-export.

No interaction block sits in this lesson on purpose — matching three phrases to two formats has no hidden mechanism to probe; the faded example below covers the one judgment worth practicing, and the real check is the exercise, in your real folder.

Worked example (follow along)

You: "Export my pivot-tables course."

Agent: "Exported. Files are in the exports folder under pivot-tables: the course as a single printable page, and the glossary as a card file for Anki."

The page: you double-click the file. The whole course renders in your browser — every lesson, one long page. You hit Print, choose "Save as PDF," and the PDF lands wherever your downloads go. That copy now survives dead batteries and works on the friend test: send it, they open it, no setup on their end.

The cards: you open Anki, File, then Import, and pick the card file. Anki asks which column is the front and which is the back — term on the front, definition on the back. Twelve terms become a deck; your phone now quizzes you in line at the store.

A week later you fix lesson 4 with a maintenance request. The PDF on your desktop still shows the old lesson 4 — the snapshot did not update itself. "Export my pivot-tables course" again; overwrite the copy you sent, if it matters.

Your turn (faded example)

Fill in the format each request produces, and one thing you'd check after:

"Print it" → ____ ; after: ____ "Make flashcards" → ____ ; after: ____ "Export this course" → ____ ; after: ____

Answer: "Print it" → the printable page; check it opens in your browser before you need it offline. "Make flashcards" → the card file; check the front/back mapping during Anki's import. "Export this course" → both; check the reported path and that both files are dated now, not from before your last edit — the snapshot rule from this lesson's explanation.

Summary + what's next

You can now move a course out of the reader: one phrase for a printable page, one for flashcards, one for both; browser print for PDF; Anki import for a deck; re-export after every edit because exports are snapshots. That closes the skill's five operations — request, practice, review, update, export — and all five are sentences to your own agent. The next request worth sending isn't about this tool at all: it is the four-part course request from lesson 01, for the topic that made you install this in the first place.