Education · checked 2026-10-20Can I vibecode Skillshare?
NOT REALLY· don't bother
The player around a class is a sitting's work: lessons in order, resume where you stopped, notes with timestamps, a project log and a streak. What a Skillshare membership sells is the library, thousands of classes from more than 9,000 teachers, recorded, edited and licensed to the site, which no prompt can produce. The useful build is a tracker for free courses (YouTube playlists, open courseware), which gives structure and a record of your projects but none of the classes.
$13.99/moprice
$168it costs you a year
one sittingbuild time
—people replaced it
What you need on hand.
DifficultyBeginner · No setup beyond your agent.
TimeAbout an hour
- Claude Code, Codex or CursorAny of them can run the prompt.
- Python 3.12FastAPI and yt-dlp install with pip; nothing compiles.
- Courses to followPaste YouTube playlists or open-courseware lists; the app has no content of its own.
- A browserPlayback goes through YouTube's embedded player, so you need a connection.
Before you buildSkillshare has a 7-day trial and no free plan on the pages we read. MIT OpenCourseWare and freeCodeCamp are free, and a tracker like this makes them easier to stick with.
- 1. Install one agent: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor.
- 2. Make an empty folder and open it in the agent.
- 3. Paste the prompt below, press enter, and answer its questions as it builds.
The prompt
Build me a personal class tracker to follow free video courses the way I would use Skillshare. Requirements: - Python 3.12 + FastAPI serving plain HTML pages with a little vanilla JS on http://127.0.0.1:4930. `python -m classes` starts it. - Add a course by pasting a YouTube playlist URL. `yt-dlp --flat-playlist --dump-single-json` (metadata only, never download video) fills title, channel, lesson order, durations and thumbnails into sqlite3 at ./data/classes.db. Also accept a list of URLs, one per line, for open-courseware pages. - Lessons play in an embedded YouTube player (IFrame Player API). The page saves the position every 10 seconds and resumes there; a lesson counts as watched at 90% of its length. - Notes: press N while watching to save a Markdown note at the current timestamp. Notes list with time links that seek the player and export to ~/ClassNotes/<course>.md. - Progress: show course percentage, the next lesson, minutes left and a weekly streak; a week counts at 60 minutes of watching, a setting in .env. - Projects: each course has a dated project log with image attachments saved under ./data/projects/<course>/, because the projects are the part worth keeping. - Learning paths: group courses into ordered paths such as "Illustration basics", drag to reorder, and show the next lesson of every path on the home page. - Single user. No accounts, no telemetry, local-first. Outbound calls: yt-dlp metadata fetches and the YouTube player itself, both named in the README. - Out of scope: downloading or re-hosting videos, recommendations, a community, certificates and a mobile app. - README: free sources to try (MIT OpenCourseWare, freeCodeCamp, channel playlists), the YouTube terms caveat for embedded playback, and a plain note that this tracks classes and does not replace Skillshare's catalogue.
Opens your agent with the prompt filled in, you press enter. Or copy it and paste it into an empty folder.
Then keep going
Next prompts, same folder.
The first prompt builds the core. Run these one at a time in the same folder to grow it into your own Skillshare.
Add search to the class tracker in this folder. Requirements: - Index every note and project entry in a SQLite FTS5 table and add a search box on the home page with results grouped by course, showing a snippet and the timestamp. - Clicking a note result opens the lesson at that time. - Rebuild the index with `python -m classes reindex` and keep it updated when notes change. - Add tests for search, quoting and deleted notes. Update the README.
Add path drafting to the class tracker in this folder. Requirements: - `python -m classes draft "watercolour basics"` asks an OpenAI-compatible endpoint (LLM_BASE_URL, LLM_MODEL, LLM_API_KEY in .env) for 8 search phrases and an order of topics, then uses `yt-dlp "ytsearch5:<phrase>"` to list candidate playlists with channel and length. - Write the candidates to drafts.md with links; nothing is added to the database until I paste a URL into the add form myself. - Say in the README that the model's suggestions are leads to check, not recommendations.
Add a weekly summary to the class tracker in this folder. Requirements: - `python -m classes weekly` prints and, if NTFY_TOPIC is set in .env, sends minutes watched, lessons finished, notes taken and the next lesson of each path for the last 7 days. - A launchd plist and a systemd timer that run it on Sunday at 18:00. - Stay silent if nothing was watched and the streak is already broken. - Update the README.
What you lose
- The classes themselves: thousands of titles from more than 9,000 teachers
- Learning paths curated by Skillshare, and certificates and badges for finishing them
- Class projects and the community that gives feedback on them
- Offline viewing, subtitles and transcripts in the app
- Classes with no ads, which the pricing page promises
Why people still pay
A subscription to a whole catalogue of creative classes costs less than buying single courses, and the classes sit in one place with teachers people already follow and projects to post. The free material exists but is scattered, so what people are paying for is someone having already picked and ordered it.
Skillshare or your own copy?
Over
Your usage
3h ×$/h
Skillshare, 1 yr$168
Your own copy, 1 yr$5running + build session
You keep$163pays for itself in the first month
Estimate · Runs locally for free and the courses it tracks are free. The build is token usage on your agent plan, against $167.88 a year for the annual membership.
Take your data, then cancel.
1 · Take your data out of Skillshare
- 1Open the Privacy Request form in the help centre, choose Download as the request type and enter your account details.
- 2The export covers your profile and account data, watch history, comments, discussions, class notes, projects, reviews and lists.
- 3We found no way to take class videos with you: the membership is access to them, so write down the class titles and teachers you want to find elsewhere.
- 4Save your own project images and notes before you cancel, to be safe.
2 · Cancel Skillshare
- 1On desktop, go to Account Settings and open Membership & Payments.
- 2Select Cancel membership and follow the steps; access continues until the end of the current billing period.
- 3On the mobile app, open your browser instead of the app, go to your account settings and cancel from Membership & Payments.
- 4A monthly subscription started through the app store is managed there, not on Skillshare's site.
- Cancel before the 7-day trial ends: the card is charged for the full year when it does.
- A one-time refund is possible if you contact support within 48 hours of the trial charge and have not used Skillshare since; renewals are not refunded.
- Deleting the account is a separate, permanent request: do the data download first.
- Skillshare sends a reminder email before an annual renewal, so cancel then if you have not used it.
The escape hatch
Don't feel like building it? These are already free.
MIT OpenCourseWareFreeFree course materials from MIT, including video lectures and notes, with no account needed.they host it
WebVisit ↗Khan AcademyFreeFree lessons and exercises from a non-profit, strongest on school subjects rather than creative skills.they host it
Web, iOS, AndroidVisit ↗freeCodeCampOpen sourceBSD-3-Clause curriculum and platform for learning to code, free to use and to run yourself.★ 458k · active Oct 2026 · self-host, real ops
WebVisit ↗
WebVisit ↗Khan AcademyFreeFree lessons and exercises from a non-profit, strongest on school subjects rather than creative skills.they host it
Web, iOS, AndroidVisit ↗freeCodeCampOpen sourceBSD-3-Clause curriculum and platform for learning to code, free to use and to run yourself.★ 458k · active Oct 2026 · self-host, real ops
WebVisit ↗
The numbers
Skillshare pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Annual, per month | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free trial | $0 | $0 | 7 days of full access for new paid subscribers; payment details required. |
| Membership | — | $13.99 | Unlimited access to classes with no ads, on web and in the iOS and Android apps, with offline viewing, subtitles, transcripts, learning paths and certificates. |
| Teams | custom | — | Company access sold on a separate Skillshare for Teams page, per user and billed yearly. |
- Free tier
- No permanent free plan on the pages we read; only the 7-day trial.
- Billing
- The web page sells one annual membership: the headline $13.99 is the annual price per month, charged as $167.88 up front. After the trial the annual membership begins and is billed for the full year. Regional pricing may differ, and the dollar price is the US page. Cancelling keeps access to the end of the billing period.
- Hidden costs
- There is no monthly plan on the website, so leaving after two months still costs a year unless you cancel inside the trial. Renewals are not refunded; Skillshare sends a reminder email before an annual renewal.
- Source
- www.skillshare.com
Also on the list
Related apps
New subscribers get a 7-day free trial; payment details are required and the card is charged when it ends.
Not really. A subscription to a whole catalogue of creative classes costs less than buying single courses, and the classes sit in one place with teachers people already follow and projects to post. The free material exists but is scattered, so what people are paying for is someone having already picked and ordered it. The prompt on this page builds the closest honest substitute.
About $13.99 a month on the Annual membership plan, $167.88 a year (checked 2026-10-20).
The classes themselves: thousands of titles from more than 9,000 teachers; Learning paths curated by Skillshare, and certificates and badges for finishing them; Class projects and the community that gives feedback on them; Offline viewing, subtitles and transcripts in the app; Classes with no ads, which the pricing page promises. If any of those matter to you, keep paying.
Yes: MIT OpenCourseWare (free), Khan Academy (free), freeCodeCamp (open source).