Claudemy: an open-source alternative to Udemy and Coursera

You wanted to learn negotiation. You got a 40-hour course, a syllabus someone wrote years ago, and a tab you never reopened.

Claudemy is a free Claude Code skill that builds the course you will actually finish. You name a topic. It researches the web and hands back about 12 audio lessons of 2 minutes each.

> teach me negotiation

With sound (or play it on the site, no install needed):

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d6447515-f442-4b77-a482-544d95dc4799

What lesson 1 looks like

The demo above is a real negotiation course. Lesson 1 is "Your Walk-Away", 2:27 of two hosts talking. The card next to it gives you:

• The idea in three lines. Decide what you will do if the ask fails, before you ask.
• How many sources agree, and who does not.
• One small thing to try, with the time it takes.
• Links to the pages it came from.

Listen for 2 minutes. Try one thing. Keep one rule.

What you get

• About 12 audio lessons, 2 minutes each. Two hosts talking, not a lecture. MP3 files you can play anywhere.
• A card per lesson. Three-line idea, source agreement, one practice, links to go deeper.
• A playbook. One rule per lesson, collected in one file you keep.
• A lesson plan that shows where the experts split. Laid out as decisions, not lessons.
• Real citations. A checker refuses any lesson that cites a page the research did not actually read. How it works, and what it misses.

How it works

1. Maps the topic into sub-topics, based on how it is usually taught.
2. Researches the web. 20 to 40 pages from practitioners, official docs, research summaries and a few dissenting views. No more than 3 pages from one site, so no single voice dominates.
3. Reads and compares. Reader agents pull cited notes. One agent merges them into themes with agreement counts.
4. Plans the course in arcs of about 4 lessons, foundations first.
5. Makes one sample lesson and waits for your reaction. Then it writes and records the rest.

Want a class built from one person's work instead? Say so: teach me negotiation from <name>'s writing. It reads their Substack or blog and builds the class from that.

Install

As a Claude Code plugin:

/plugin marketplace add assafkip/claudemy
/plugin install claudemy@claudemy

Or copy skills/claudemy/ into ~/.claude/skills/, or download claudemy.skill from the latest release.

Then ask for any topic: teach me <topic>.

Needs

• Claude Code with web search.
• Python 3 with beautifulsoup4 (pip install beautifulsoup4), and ffmpeg.
• Audio: an ElevenLabs API key for natural two-voice lessons, either in ELEVENLABS_API_KEY or typed into the plugin's configuration prompt when you install it (stored in your OS keychain). Without one, macOS's built-in voices are used (free, plainer).
• Optional: pandoc for a Word copy of the cards.

Voices can be changed with CLAUDEMY_VOICE_A / CLAUDEMY_VOICE_B (ElevenLabs voice ids) or CLAUDEMY_SAY_A / CLAUDEMY_SAY_B (macOS voices).

Data

Claudemy runs on your machine inside Claude Code. It fetches the public web pages it researches and saves them in a local workspace folder. If you set an ElevenLabs API key, the text of each lesson is sent to ElevenLabs to render the audio. Without a key, audio is rendered locally with macOS voices. The skill has no server, collects no analytics, and stores nothing outside your machine. Details: privacy page.

FAQ

Is Claudemy free? Yes. The skill is MIT licensed. You pay only for what you already use: your Claude plan, and ElevenLabs credits if you want the premium voices. The macOS voices cost nothing.

How is it different from Udemy or Coursera? Course sites sell a fixed course someone recorded once. Claudemy builds a course on the topic you name, at your level, from current sources, and shows you where those sources disagree. Lessons are 2 minutes and end in one thing to try, so the course is built to be finished.

What topics does it work for? Anything people write about well on the open web. Skills (negotiation, public speaking, sourdough), professional topics (pricing, hiring, SQL), and subjects (stoicism, music theory). Health, legal and financial topics get a note where advice depends on your situation.

Does it copy other people's content? No. It reads pages the way a researcher does, writes its own lessons, and links to the sources. Pages it reads are saved only in your local workspace for your own study.

Can I use it without ElevenLabs? Yes. On a Mac it falls back to the built-in voices. The cards and playbook work with no audio at all.

How long does a course take to make? A 12-lesson course is a long-running Claude Code session: research, reading, writing and about 25 minutes of generated audio.

Can I learn from one specific expert? Yes. Name them in the request. Claudemy finds their Substack or blog and builds the course from their writing.

Who built it

Built by Assaf Kipnis. I run ASK Consulting, a fractional Trust & Safety and fraud intelligence practice. More of my work: askconsulting.io

License

MIT. Free to use, change and share.