gcr

Command-line utility for running a class on GitHub, a lightweight GitHub classroom replacement.

At the moment, this is early alpha software, use at your own risk.

Feedback welcome!

Installation

The recommended method for installation is uv tool install gcr-cli, you can then run gcr.

uvx: uvx --from gcr-cli gcr

pipx: pipx install gcr-cli, then run gcr

Setup

1. Set env variable GITHUB_TOKEN to a classic token with org & repo admin permissions.
2. Manually create a GitHub organization for your classroom.
3. Create a class.toml with your roster & settings. gcr will look for class.toml in the current directory, or you can pass the -c/--config option to specify the path.

org = "name-of-github-org"

students = [
  "list",
  "of",
  "student",
  "accounts",
]

staff = [
  "list",
  "of",
  "staff",
  "accounts",
]

staff_team = "staff"
student_team = "students"
student_permission = "push"
staff_permission = "maintain"
requests_per_minute = 60
retry_attempts = 3
retry_wait_seconds = 5

Usage

All commands take two options:

• -c/--config: path to class.toml (default: current dir)
• --dry-run: avoid making actual changes on GitHub

gcr setup

Initialize GitHub organization and invite staff & students.

The organization must already exist and your API key must have access.

gcr assign {template-repo-name}

Creates one private repo per student, granting access to their account & staff.

gcr clone {assignment} [optional-student]

Clone student repos to a local directory.

Changelog

0.3.0 - 5 August 2026

• Addition of clone
• Prompt to automatically make assignment repository a template.

0.2.0 - 4 August 2026

• First 'public' release.