install-mkdocs-template_skill

Overview

This skill creates a complete MkDocs Material project scaffold tailored for intelligent textbooks. It sets up a Conda environment, installs dependencies, generates a fully populated mkdocs.yml with Material options, adds branded CSS and social card support, builds the site, and deploys to GitHub Pages. Use it to bootstrap a production-ready textbook site quickly.

How this skill works

The skill collects basic project metadata (site name, description, author, repo info, brand color, optional analytics ID) and writes a directory layout with docs/, docs/css/extra.css, docs/img placeholders, chapter and demo pages, a plugins/ folder with a social_override plugin, setup.py, and mkdocs.yml populated from a template. It installs dependencies into a Conda environment, installs the plugin in editable mode, builds the site locally, and runs mkdocs gh-deploy to publish to GitHub Pages.

When to use it

• Starting a new intelligent textbook or course site with MkDocs Material
• Bootstrapping consistent branding and social media card support
• Creating a reproducible local environment using Conda
• When you want a turnkey GitHub Pages deployment workflow
• When you need social_override plugin support for per-page images

Best practices

• Run in a clean git repo with remote origin configured before deploying
• Provide logo.png and favicon.ico in docs/img after scaffold runs
• Customize primary_color_rgb in extra.css to match your brand
• Test mkdocs serve locally before gh-deploy to catch build warnings
• Keep the Conda environment named 'mkdocs' and reactivate it for future edits

Example use cases

• Create an academic textbook site with chapter navigation, learning graphs, and interactive sims
• Launch a course website that auto-generates high-quality social cards per page
• Prototype an educational micro-sim collection under a branded site
• Standardize documentation and textbook style across multiple courses or authors
• Deploy a single-command site update workflow to GitHub Pages