Storycraft

Markdown storyboard → SCORM 1.2 package. CLI plus an in-browser playground.

storycraft my-course.md
# → my-course.zip  (uploadable to Moodle, TalentLMS, Cornerstone, LearnUpon, …)

A small internal tool extracted from the Kidvento authoring pipeline and open-sourced as a teaching artifact. Not pitched as a Storyline replacement — Storyline is excellent at what it does. Storycraft fills the narrow slot where a full visual-authoring workflow is overkill: compliance modules, induction decks, and localised variants where the storyboard is the course and the slides exist mostly to carry text, narration, and a knowledge check.

It is also the reference build that exercises every scorm-kit subcommand. If you want to see what a clean SCORM 1.2 package looks like coming out of a deterministic build, run storycraft examples/posh-awareness.md and feed the zip into scorm-kit lint.

Attribution

The Storycraft playground uses scorm-again (MIT © Jonathan Putney) to power its mock LMS preview. When you click "Launch with mock LMS", scorm-again provides a spec-compliant window.API in the parent frame so the course runs against a real SCORM runtime — not a no-op shim.

Why a separate tool

Most teams treat the storyboard and the published course as two artifacts. Reviewers comment on a doc, the developer rebuilds it in Storyline, and any subsequent edit becomes a two-place update. For the modules where that round-trip is the bottleneck — not the visual design — Storycraft collapses it: the storyboard is the source of truth and the SCORM package is a deterministic build artifact (same input, byte-identical zip).

	Before	With Storycraft
Storyboard → first reviewable build	a half-day in the authoring tool	seconds
Edit a typo found in QA	re-open authoring tool, re-publish, re-zip	edit Markdown, rerun
Build 6 localised variants	6 source files, manual sync	6 Markdown files, one build script
Output runs in any SCORM 1.2 LMS	✔	✔ — same

It does not replace Storyline (or Rise, or Captivate) for visual-heavy or interaction-rich courses. It replaces the Markdown-doc-then-rebuild loop for the chunk of corporate modules that are essentially "slides + narration + a knowledge check + maybe a scenario."

Quick start

git clone <repo>
cd storycraft
node src/storycraft.js examples/posh-awareness.md
# → dist/posh-awareness.zip

Upload the zip to Moodle as a SCORM activity. It tracks completion, score, and per-question results via the SCORM 1.2 API.

Or open playground/index.html in any browser — paste Markdown, download a SCORM zip in the browser. Pure client-side, no install.

Storyboard syntax

---
title: Workplace Respect — POSH Awareness
duration: 15min
passing_score: 70
language: en
---

## Slide: Welcome
[Narration] Welcome to this 15-minute course on workplace respect.
Click Next to begin.

## Check: Recognising harassment
[Q] Is repeated unwelcome banter over Slack covered under POSH?
[A*] Yes — verbal/written conduct of a sexual nature qualifies regardless of medium.
[A] No — Slack isn't covered.
[Feedback correct] Right — POSH applies wherever work happens.

## Branch: The hallway moment
[Prompt] You overhear a senior colleague making a suggestive comment...
[Option: Speak up → moment-speak]
[Option: Check in privately → moment-check]
[Option: Walk away → moment-walk]

## Slide: You speak up
[Id] moment-speak
Direct intervention can be powerful — when safe.

Full grammar in src/parser.js.

What ships in the SCORM package

posh-awareness.zip
├── imsmanifest.xml      SCORM 1.2 manifest (ADL CAM)
├── player.html          SCO entry point
├── player.js            runtime: navigation, scoring, SCORM/xAPI calls
├── player.css           WCAG 2.2 AA styling; dark mode; prefers-reduced-motion
├── scorm12-api.js       LMS API wrapper; no-op fallback if launched standalone
└── assets/              any images you reference in the storyboard

The runtime:

• Speaks SCORM 1.2: cmi.core.score.raw, cmi.core.lesson_status, cmi.core.session_time, cmi.interactions.* (0-indexed)
• Speaks xAPI (optional): set xapi.endpoint and xapi.auth in frontmatter — emits experienced, answered, passed/failed statements
• Runs standalone: open player.html directly, SCORM calls degrade to no-ops, course still completes
• WCAG 2.2 AA: keyboard nav, focus management on slide change, prefers-color-scheme, prefers-reduced-motion, ARIA roles on radiogroups + progress bar

Architecture

storyboard.md
   │
   ▼
parser.js (AST) ──► storycraft.js ──┬──► imsmanifest.xml
                                    ├──► player.html  (course JSON injected)
                                    ├──► runtime files
                                    └──► zip

Runtime is pure JS, no dependencies, no build step. CLI is pure Node, no npm install. The whole thing is ~700 lines of code. Runs offline on any machine with Node and zip.

What it doesn't do (yet)

• Drag-and-drop, hotspot, dial interactions — Storyline territory
• Custom triggers/variables beyond branching and scoring
• AICC, SCORM 2004, cmi5 — only SCORM 1.2 today (cmi5 is on the roadmap)
• Multi-SCO packages — single-SCO only

Roadmap

• --locale <lang> for per-language builds from one source + override files
• storycraft watch for live-rebuild during authoring
• storycraft lint to validate a storyboard without building
• cmi5 target alongside SCORM 1.2

Author

Built by Parth Dhanani — Senior Instructional Designer & SCORM Team Lead at Kidvento.

Designed for the workflow that handled 100+ K-12 SCORM packages at Kidvento and 6-language localisations at Learning Owl.