SMF·SKILLSHARE
Can a prompt replace Skillshare?
Learning & languages — creative class catalogue
Exhibit tracking slip
Verdict
Skillshare is a two-sided marketplace: thousands of teachers publish because the audience is there, and the audience subscribes because the classes are. Neither side exists without the other, and a video player with a progress bar does not begin to substitute. This is the clearest network-effect no in the category.
Exhibit A — The prompt
Received on31.07.2026Build a study tracker for video and reading courses you already have access to, aimed at the problem of starting many and finishing none.
A course record holds a title, a source URL or local path, a list of lessons with durations, and a project you intend to produce. Lessons are marked done with a date. Import lesson lists from a YouTube playlist URL, a local folder of video files, or a pasted list.
The number that changes behaviour is time-to-finish, so compute and display it: at your actual pace over the last four weeks, when will this course be done? A course whose answer is "March 2029" is not a course you are taking, and seeing that written down is the point of the tool.
Enforce one rule: at most three courses in progress. Starting a fourth requires explicitly archiving one, with a reason. Archived courses stay listed with the reason visible, so the pattern in your own abandonment is legible.
Notes are Markdown per lesson, with a timestamp field so a note can point at a moment in a video. The project deliverable is a folder path and a done flag, because a course without an artefact at the end is entertainment.
Build one report: hours watched versus projects finished, monthly. It is an uncomfortable ratio and it is the honest one.
Do not scrape or download subscription video. Track material you have a right to, and let the tool hold links rather than files for anything hosted elsewhere.Opening prefills the prompt — press enter to run it.
Exhibit B — What you lose
- B.1 the catalogue — thousands of classes across design, illustration, film and business
- B.2 teachers who publish there because that is where the students are
- B.3 class projects with feedback from other students
- B.4 offline downloads and the mobile apps
- B.5 discovery: finding a good class on a subject you cannot yet name
Exhibit C — Why people still pay: teacher network and class catalogue
One class that changes how you work pays for the year, and you cannot know in advance which one it is — which is exactly what a catalogue subscription is for.
Questions
Can I bring my Skillshare progress across?
No — there is no export of watched classes or saved lists, so you would re-enter the handful of courses you were partway through. For anything you have not started, cancelling loses nothing you had.
Where does the course material come from?
Anything you already have access to: free YouTube series, courses you bought outright, university open courseware, PDFs. The tracker holds links and progress, not content.
What does it cost to run?
Nothing. It is SQLite and a small web app on your own machine.
What is the one thing that does not survive the rebuild?
Discovery. Skillshare surfaces a class on a technique you did not know had a name, and a tracker over material you already chose can only ever organise what you already knew to look for.
Related tools
Receipt