PoC: workshop, explorer and JSON views built from lab frontmatter - #231
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Three surfaces over the same lab metadata, to show that one source can drive several audiences without duplicating content: - workshop.html - instructor-led core path, ordered by lab then task, with cumulative elapsed time, optional tasks listed per session, and gated tasks called out as demo-only with what they require. - explore.html - every task as a card, filterable by lab, section, level, duration and access. - labs.json - the same catalogue as a machine-readable endpoint, for anything that needs the data without scraping the pages. Each reads site.pages at build time, so adding a task page makes it appear in all three with no list to maintain. These are web-only pages and are never consumed as raw markdown, so unlike the lab instruction pages they use Liquid directly. index.md is untouched: it filters to /Instructions/Exercises, so the published lab catalogue is unaffected. Verified by rendering all three against the real frontmatter: labs.json parses, every core task appears in the agenda, explore emits one card per task, and the totals match the lab pages. Co-authored-by: Copilot App <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Copilot-Session: dc4690cc-57d6-48a7-abc8-bc8570113ab1
Both pages carried their own two-column shell, nav rail and CSS. That now lives in _layouts/workshop.html, so each page keeps only its content and the two stay consistent. The look is modelled on Just the Docs, but the theme itself is deliberately not adopted. Its sidebar is generated from nav_order/parent frontmatter, whereas ours is generated from lab metadata, which suits this repo better - so what is borrowed is the presentation, not the machinery. Adopting the theme outright would also mean either replacing the site theme for every lab page or running two Jekyll builds, and neither is warranted for two pages. The layout inherits the site's default layout, so the header and footer still come from MicrosoftLearning/Jekyll-Theme. Jekyll resolves local _layouts/ ahead of remote_theme, and only pages opting in with layout: workshop are affected, so every lab page is untouched. The nav rail is generated from the same frontmatter as the pages: labs in order with their core durations, and the current page marked with aria-current. Verified by rendering the layout against the real frontmatter: three labs appear in the nav, page content is injected, the correct nav item is marked current on each page, and all 18 classes the pages use are styled by the layout - the check that caught the session-card CSS going missing when it was first moved. Co-authored-by: Copilot App <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Copilot-Session: dc4690cc-57d6-48a7-abc8-bc8570113ab1
The pages and their comments explained how they were built - what is read from frontmatter, what is not written by hand, what stays in step automatically. That is of no use to a reader and reads oddly in shipped content. Reader-facing text now describes what the page offers. Comments say what the template does. Also drops the generated_by field from labs.json, which was describing the file to its own consumers. No behaviour change: all three views and the layout still render, and the totals are unchanged. Co-authored-by: Copilot App <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Copilot-Session: dc4690cc-57d6-48a7-abc8-bc8570113ab1
jekyll-sitemap is enabled, so these pages would otherwise be listed and indexed. Nothing links to them, but a sitemap entry makes them findable anyway, and they are a proof of concept rather than published material. Remove sitemap: false when they are ready to be surfaced. Co-authored-by: Copilot App <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com> Copilot-Session: dc4690cc-57d6-48a7-abc8-bc8570113ab1
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What
The proof of concept: three surfaces built from the same lab metadata, showing that one source can serve several audiences without duplicating content.
workshop.htmlexplore.htmllabs.jsonEach reads
site.pagesat build time, so adding a task page makes it appear in all three with no list to maintain.Scope
Three files. The metadata backfill, the generator and the CI check were split out into #238 so they could land on
main— this PR is now only the exploratory part.These are web-only pages, never consumed as raw markdown, so unlike the lab instruction pages they use Liquid directly.
index.mdis untouched: it filters to/Instructions/Exercises, so the published lab catalogue is unaffected.Verification
No Ruby available locally, so all three were rendered against the real frontmatter with a Liquid engine and the Jekyll filters shimmed:
labs.jsonparses as valid JSON, 3 labs / 17 tasksexplore.htmlemits exactly 17 cards for 17 tasksKnown limitation
Nothing in CI renders these templates, so a Liquid error here would not be caught. That is tracked separately as a real Jekyll build check — deliberately not the Python shim used above, which approximates Jekyll and whose failure mode is false confidence.
Base
Branches off
lab-metadata(#238), which provides the frontmatter these views read. Keep this unmerged while the approach is evaluated.