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D51. A new course keeps what the author said of it; the agent's draft says what it decided alone and asks one question at a time (15 Oct 2026)

Revised on 16 Oct 2026 by D52: « while the plan is a draft » now means until a version is validated, which removes decided and question; draft_plan is now write_plan. The rest of this entry is kept as it was decided.

The app’s « Nouveau module » page (decided on 15 October) replaces a window that asked for a title: the author writes a request, joins documents and answers a few questions (who it is for, how long, the language, slides or a page that scrolls, 3D, voices, the business goal, quizzes, a case, the tone, accessibility, the LMS, the brand), each of which may be left to the agent; « Créer avec Claude » creates the course and hands the request to the author’s AI, which writes the plan first (D35). Two things were missing in the core. What the page says had nowhere to stay: a request is a deep link that opens a new conversation each time, so the next request, or an author who creates the course by hand, would lose it. And a vague request: the agent either asks its questions before writing (in its own window, where the author waits without seeing anything move) or decides alone and says so in its conversation, which the app never shows. Options weighed for the second: questions first; a plan written at once whose decisions and questions are said in the plan, where the app shows them. Chosen: the plan at once, with « Ce que Claude a décidé » at its head and its real questions, one at a time: the author corrects something concrete instead of filling a questionnaire.

  • What the author said stays in the course (@elabora/node initProject/createProject brief, elabora init --audience --business-goal --duration --presentation --lms --notes): who it is for (plan.audience.role), the business goal (plan.businessGoal) and the duration in the plan, a draft the agent goes on writing; the presentation (presentation.mode) and the LMS (delivery.lms) in course.json; the rest (the tone, the brand wanted, what is left to the agent, the request itself) as notes under AGENTS.md’s « Notes for this course » (D34), in the author’s words, which Elabora never changes. Refused before anything is written when it would not fit the plan’s schema or names an LMS without a profile.
  • plan.duration { min, max } in minutes: what the author or the client asked for (a range, one figure, or a floor where an agent proposes several modules), the plan being the contract; course.durationMinutes stays the built course’s time, written into the package.
  • plan.decided[] and plan.question, while the plan is a draft: each decision the agent took because the author left it open (topic, the page’s words as a slug: audience, duration, language, format, 3d, voices, business-goal, quizzes, case, tone, brand, accessibility, lms, or another with a label; choice; a short why, where it shows; the items it shapes, checked as E_PLAN_REFERENCE), and the one question whose answer would change the plan most (text, topic, items), never more than one: the next comes once it is answered (a new request), and the agent updates the plan meanwhile. Written in the course language. Translation units, the proof dossier and the build ignore them.
  • Validating the plan removes both, and they are outside the content hash (planContentHash leaves them out, as it does status and approval): they are the draft’s, never the contract’s, written into a validated plan they unfreeze nothing, and nothing a reviewer or a client reads names the AI as an author (the rule of 15 October, D48 and D50). A duration whose min is above its max is E_SCHEMA.
  • The course AGENTS.md (rule 1 and the workflow’s first step, a new revision) and the authoring skill say it: read the notes and sources/ (the documents the author joined, copied by the app; D49 makes them readable and keeps them out of packages), write the whole plan even from a vague request, fill decided, ask at most one question. Revisit if: authors want several questions answered at once (a list with answers kept), a decision’s history after validation (the journal has it today), or the page’s choices grow a field of their own in the plan or the course (then move them out of the notes).