Course plans & templates

If you already know the shape of your course — a five-day training syllabus, a term plan, a module outline your team agreed — you can give Lurno that shape instead of letting the AI invent one. The course follows your plan, the plan stays attached so everything written later follows it too, and you can save the shape as a template to build the next course the same way.

What this does

In the Create flow, a structure you supply is a first-class input — from any format, and editable at every point — alongside letting the AI propose one.

A plan is two levels deep: modules, each holding lessons, and each lesson can carry notes about what it should cover. The content inside each lesson — the explanations, questions and media — is still written for you, guided by those notes.

Supply a plan

In the Create flow, the question Where should the structure come from? offers three ways to supply one:

Upload a plan

PDF · Word · PowerPoint · image · markdown · text. A photo of a printed table works.

Lurno reads it and finds the modules and lessons — “Finding the modules and lessons in Syllabus.docx”. It’s reading the plan as a plan: your headings become modules, your sessions become lessons, and what the plan says about each session becomes that lesson’s notes. That’s a different job from reading a document for its subject matter, and the two are kept apart.

This file is only used to work out the structure. It is not added to your Sources.

A plan describes the shape of a course, not what it teaches, so it never becomes grounding material in your document library. If you also want the course built from what a document says, attach it separately under Do you want to use your own material?

Where a plan contains links — a test the trainer runs elsewhere, a reading hosted online — they’re kept and attached to the lesson they belong to. Lurno doesn’t invent a replacement for something your plan points at: a lesson that ends with your own external test gets your test, not seven generated questions standing in for it.

Write the outline

Type or paste it. It doesn’t have to be tidy:

Four parts. Start with the basics, spend the middle two on worked examples and practice, and finish with a review and a short test.

A paragraph, a rough list, or a finished outline all work; Lurno works out the modules and lessons. Text that already reads as an outline — headings with items under them — is read directly, without calling the AI at all. Prose like the example above is handed to the AI to structure.

With AI switched off, only the first kind works, so write it as an outline: one line per module, with its lessons beneath.

Use a saved template

Pick one from the list. See Templates below.

Check and change the plan

What comes back is shown as a tree you can edit before anything is built: “5 modules, 22 lessons”. Rename, add, remove, and edit each lesson’s notes.

Change something takes an instruction in words:

Change something: merge days 4 and 5

Choose Ask, and the plan is rewritten accordingly. Undo puts it back exactly as it was, so you can try a change without risk.

Gaps are pointed out before you build. A plan often names a unit without listing its sessions — “Module 3: Final assessment”, a day whose cell was left blank. Rather than quietly filling that module with a placeholder lesson that exists only so the course can be published, the screen tells you which modules are empty and offers Add sessions. It’s a gap in your plan, and you’re better placed to notice it now than afterwards.

Start over discards the plan and returns you to the choice of where the structure comes from.

How big a plan can be

A supplied plan can be larger than one the AI proposes: up to 40 modules, with up to 20 lessons in each. If yours is bigger, the extra items are left out and you’re told exactly how many, rather than the plan being silently truncated.

The plan stays with the course

A course built from a plan keeps it. Open the course and find Course plan on its Configure tab:

The structure this course follows. The AI reads it whenever it writes anything inside this course.

That last sentence is the point. Writing a new lesson, drafting questions, generating an assessment — each reads the plan and the notes for the part of the course it’s writing, so material added months later still follows the structure you set out, not a fresh guess.

The card shows where the plan came from and how big it is, with Preview to see the original file as you uploaded it, and Remove:

New lessons and questions will no longer follow this plan. Lessons already written are unaffected.

A course carries one plan at most. If the original file is ever removed, the card says so, and the plan itself — the structure and the notes — stays attached.

Where your plan names activities — group discussion, case study, quiz — those words are carried through to the kinds of material each lesson is given.

Templates

A template is the shape of a course — its modules and lessons, and the notes the plan was read with — saved so you can build the next one the same way without writing it out again.

Save one

After you build, on the screen that shows the course’s shape, tick Save this as a template for next time and give it a name. It’s off by default.

Anyone here can start a program from it. Reusing it costs nothing — the plan is saved as it stands, not read again.

It saves the structure as you approved it, edits included — not the raw file you started from.

Reuse one

In the Create flow, choose Use a saved template. Search by name; each template shows how many modules and lessons it has and how often it’s been used.

Using “Onboarding — five days” — nothing was read again.

Nothing is re-read from the original file, so starting from a template is instant and uses no AI.

The Templates page

Programs → Program templates (your organization’s word for a course appears in the name) lists everything saved: /dashboard/programs/templates.

For each template you can Use it to start a course, Preview the saved plan, Rename it, or Delete it. Each shows where its structure originally came from — Proposed by AI, Written by hand, From a description, From documents, From an uploaded plan, From another template, or Refined by AI — and templates visible only to their creator are marked Only you.

Programs already built from this template keep their plan — only the saved template is removed.

Deleting a template never changes a course that was built from it.

Without permission to create courses, the page is read-only: you can look at the plans but not use, rename or remove them.

Reference

Thing	Behaviour
Plan formats	PDF · Word · PowerPoint · image · markdown · text, or typed
Plan depth	Modules → lessons, with per-lesson notes
Size limit	40 modules × 20 lessons for a supplied plan; the excess is reported, not silently dropped
The plan file	Not added to Sources — it’s shape, not subject matter
Links in a plan	Kept and attached; not replaced with generated content
Empty modules	Pointed out before building, with Add sessions
Change something	Rewrites the plan from an instruction; Undo restores it exactly
After building	Attached as the Course plan on the Configure tab; every AI generation in the course reads it
Plans per course	One
Removing the plan	New content stops following it; existing lessons are untouched
Saving a template	Off by default; saves the approved structure, not the raw file
Reusing a template	Nothing re-read; no AI used
Deleting a template	Courses built from it keep their plan
AI switched off	Outline-shaped typed plans and templates work; uploaded plans and prose can’t be read

Troubleshooting

“We read the file but couldn’t work out the structure.” The file didn’t look like a plan — often a document about the topic rather than an outline of the course. Choose Try again, or Write it myself instead and paste the outline.

“AI is turned off for your organisation, so we can’t read a plan for you.” Uploaded plans and prose descriptions need AI. Write the outline as an outline instead — one line per module with its lessons beneath — and it’s read without AI.

My plan was cut short. It exceeded 40 modules or 20 lessons in a module. The screen says how many were left out; split the plan across two courses, or merge sessions with Change something.

The course was built but the plan isn’t on it. You’ll have seen “the plan couldn’t be saved to it — new lessons won’t follow it.” Re-attach it from the course’s Configure tab.

I uploaded a syllabus and it’s not in my Sources. Correct — a plan is used for structure only. Attach it under your own material in the Create flow if you want its contents used too.

A lesson I expected to be generated just links out. Your plan pointed at an external resource for that session, and Lurno attached it rather than writing a substitute.

My template isn’t in the picker. Saving is off by default — it’s only saved if you ticked Save this as a template after building. If you did and saw a failure message, save it again from the course’s plan.

I deleted a template and worried about my courses. Courses already built from it keep their plan. Only the saved template is gone.