Improve

Skill chaz-clark/canvas-toolbox/.claude/skills/improve

Use to log, prioritize, move, or review COURSE IMPROVEMENTS — the local kanban backlog in the course's `IMPROVEMENTS.md`. Load whenever an audit surfaces findings, the user notes something to fix / try / revisit, a handoff lands action items, or you're asked "what's on the board / what's next / show the backlog / log this". Each improvement is a card that moves Backlog → Ready → In Progress → In Review → Done. This is CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT (kaizen) for the course — NOT continuous integration / CI pipelines / GitHub Actions.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add chaz-clark/canvas-toolbox --skill improve

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

2 stars2 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

SKILL.md

3.6 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Improve — the course continuous-improvement board

Every course accumulates "should fix / should try" items — from audits, from teaching a term, from the instructor noticing something. Left in chat or one-off letters, they're lost by the next session. This skill keeps them in one local, git-tracked kanban board so improvements are tracked to done, not rediscovered every term.

The board

IMPROVEMENTS.md at the course root. Git-tracked (travels with the repo), plain markdown (the instructor can edit it directly), no external service. If it doesn't exist yet, copy IMPROVEMENTS.template.md from this skill to create it — confirm with the instructor the first time.

The one rule

When an improvement is found — by an audit, by the instructor, by a handoff — it becomes a card on the board. When it's worked, it moves through the columns. Nothing that matters gets left only in chat.

Columns (the lifecycle)

🗄 Backlog (unordered ideas) → 🔴 Ready (prioritized; top = next) → 🟡 In Progress (being worked) → 🔵 In Review (done but unverified — awaiting the instructor) → ✅ Done (verified, linked to the PR/commit that closed it).

Card schema

One line per card, compact:

- **[C-###] Short title** — src: <audit YYYY-MM-DD | user | handoff | session> · size <S/M/L> · risk <low/med/high> · <link when it moves>

id C-### — stable, monotonic; never reused. Assign the next free number.
src — where it came from + date, so provenance survives.
size / risk — rough, for ordering. No story points.
link — the PR/commit/handoff, added as the card moves to In Review / Done.

How to work it (lightweight agile — solo-instructor scale)

Log: new find → a Backlog card (or straight to Ready if it's clearly next). Audits write their findings here as cards, not as a separate lost letter.
Prioritize: order Ready so the top is the next thing to pull. Tag size/risk.
Pull, don't push: start work by pulling the top of Ready into In Progress. WIP limit: keep In Progress small (≈2). Finish before starting.
Review gate: work lands in In Review, not Done, until the instructor has seen/verified it. Nothing self-marks Done.
Close: move to Done with the PR/commit link and the date. Keep Done as the record (prune only when it's long).
Age: flag a card that's sat in In Progress/In Review too long — surface it.

Phrases that load this

"log this / add to the board", "what's on the board / show the backlog", "what's next / what should I work on", "move C-012 to in progress / done", "prioritize the board", "turn the audit into cards".

Where it plugs in

audit — an audit's output is a set of IMPROVEMENTS.md cards (with src: audit <date>), so findings are tracked to closure instead of filed and forgotten.
Handoffs — a received handoff's action items become cards.
The board is course context (no student PII) — Zone-1, safe to read and commit.