Before: A learning objective cannot be observed or measured.
Objectives use assessable outcomes
The assistant works from your declared standard and flags vague verbs before they spread into activities.
HINT for Educational Designers
Your assistant creates lessons fast. HINT keeps every objective aligned.
HINT keeps course goals, activities, assessments, rubrics and accessibility rules in plain-text notes beside learning materials. Your assistant reads the design for this course before writing a lesson or assessment.
The package is named for the role: @openhint/hintbook-instructional-designer.
Where it helps
Three situations your team will recognize
Before: An exam tests content that no objective covers.
Assessment follows alignment
Every activity and assessment names the objectives it serves, making omissions visible.
Before: Rubric levels change meaning from one criterion to another.
Performance levels stay consistent
Declared descriptors and grading policy travel with the rubric while course-specific rules remain scoped.
See it
A real course syllabus from the demo
The Greendale Courses demo grounds its Spanish 101 syllabus in SRC-1.
demo-greendale-courses/courses/spanish-101/syllabus.md.hint ↗
# read Approved source
../../sources/approved.md
# course spanish-101-1 {#instructional_designer_demo}
Approved course grounded in SRC-1.
# never Invented detailsWhat your assistant does next
It builds the course document inside the approved alignment, applies accessibility rules, and marks unsupported facts for a source.
What your AI assistant receives
<course name="spanish-101-1">
Approved course grounded in SRC-1.
</course>
<never name="Invented details">…</never>Your boundaries stay visible
What it will never do
- Invent a fact in course content without a cited material.
- Assess an objective that the course never declared.
- Change grading policy outside the approved grading rules.
FAQ
Questions instructional designers ask
Does it export to an LMS?
HINT works with Markdown artifacts; connect the generated material to your LMS through its existing import or publishing process.
Does it enforce Bloom's taxonomy?
Only if you declare the verb and objective rules your program uses; HINT does not impose a framework.
Can courses use different grading policies?
Yes. Put each course's grading rules in its folder so they do not leak into another course.
For your technical colleague
The vocabulary
A hintbook is a vocabulary for your profession—installed, not written by you.
course- Sets the title, audience, level and duration.
module- Groups ordered objectives, activities and materials.
objective- Defines a measurable learning objective with a stable identifier.
activity- Names what learners do and the objective it supports.
assessment- States how declared objectives are evaluated.
rubric- Groups consistent criteria and performance levels.
criterion- Defines one observable dimension in a rubric.
alignment- Links objectives to activities and assessments.
Manual setup
Bootstrap is read-only: it prints instructions for the assistant. The assistant performs the installation.
npm install -g @openhint/cli
hint config
hint add @openhint/hintbook-instructional-designer
hint apply
hint verify courses/spanish-101/syllabus.md
hint emit courses/spanish-101/syllabus.md