Lecture Pilot

An AI-powered VS Code extension that helps university lecturers create structured lecture content — from outline to slides, teleprompter scripts, and quiz questions — using LLMs directly inside the editor.

Features

Milestone-Based Lecture Generation

Lecture Pilot guides you through a structured content creation workflow using milestones:

1. Initialize Lecture — Generate a structured lecture outline with slide titles from a topic description and desired slide count.
2. Brainstorm Literature — Get literature suggestions (textbooks, papers, online resources) relevant to your lecture topic, with web search support.
3. Generate Slides from Titles — Automatically fill each slide section with content based on the generated outline.
4. Generate Teleprompter — Create speaker notes/teleprompter scripts for each slide.
5. Generate Quiz Questions — Produce quiz questions (Multiple Choice, Single Choice, True/False) based on the lecture content.

AI Chat Sidebar

A built-in chat sidebar lets you interact with the LLM directly. The AI agent can read and edit your lecture file using tools — all file changes are previewed in a diff view and require your explicit approval before being applied.

Background Watchers

• Complexity Watcher — Monitors your lecture content as you edit and flags sections that may be too complex for students.
• Format Watcher — Checks formatting rules (line length).

Both watchers are configurable and trigger automatically after a set number of character changes.

Multi-Provider LLM Support

• Google Gemini — Supports Gemini 2.5 and 3.0 models.
• OpenAI — Supports GPT-5 family models.

Switch providers and models at any time via the status bar or command palette.

DSL-Based Lecture Format

Lectures are written in Markdown with a custom DSL using HTML comment tags:

---
lehrvideo: true
...
---
<!-- scene name="Introduction" -->
<!-- slide -->
# Introduction
Slide content here...

<!-- teleprompter -->
Speaker notes for this slide...

<!-- quiz -->
## What is 2+2?
- 3 <!-- false -->
- 4 <!-- true -->
- 5 <!-- false -->

Requirements

• VS Code 1.105.0 or later
• An API key for at least one supported LLM provider:
  • Google AI Studio (for Gemini models)
  • OpenAI Platform (for GPT models)

Getting Started

1. Install the extension (via .vsix or from source).
2. Open or create a .md file.
3. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and run Lecture Pilot: Set API Key for Current Provider.
4. Use the Lecture Pilot sidebar or run milestone commands from the Command Palette.

Commands

All commands are available via Ctrl+Shift+P under the Lecture Pilot category:

Command	Description
Set Language for LLM	Set response language (English / German)
Set Model for LLM	Choose the LLM model
Set Thinking Level for LLM	Set reasoning depth (Low / Medium / High)
Set API Key for Current Provider	Store your API key securely
Clear API Key for Current Provider	Remove stored API key
Initialize Lecture	Generate a lecture outline
Brainstorm New Lecture	Get literature suggestions
Generate Content From Titles	Fill slides with content
Generate Teleprompter From Slides	Create speaker notes
Generate Quiz Questions	Generate quiz questions
Toggle Complexity Watcher	Enable/disable complexity analysis
Start Complexity Analysis	Run complexity analysis manually
Toggle Format Watcher	Enable/disable format checking
Start Format Analysis	Run format analysis manually

Building from Source

# Install dependencies
npm install
cd webview-ui && npm install && cd ..

# Build everything (webview + extension)
npm run build:all

# Package as .vsix
npx @vscode/vsce package --allow-missing-repository

Development

# Watch mode (extension + webview)
npm run watch:all

# Run tests
npm test

# Lint
npm run lint

Press F5 in VS Code to launch the Extension Development Host for testing.

License

Apache License 2.0