Time: Untimed
Workshop: Non-SDLC agent

Museum Exhibit Studio turns educator-approved facts into visitor-ready exhibit copy:

approved facts -> bounded prompt -> curator session -> structural checks -> human review

You build one growing console application in place, inside start-museum/<language>. Each step adds one idea and ends with a real run, so the curator comes together in front of you:

The seven hands-on steps take about 90 minutes. Complete them in order, then celebrate what you built and explore the resources in the final step.

The starter already ships the plumbing you should never have to write: the approved fact sets and their bounds, the fact-selection menu, a streaming printer, deterministic exhibit validation, the scoped Wikipedia MCP server with its deny-by-default permission handler, the single-file exhibit.html write permission, the system messages, the fixed prompt text for the exhibit structure, the research request, and the page requirements, and the error handling around your code. You never edit the helper files. You write the SDK code: the session setup, the tool registration and session configurations, the instructions in the exhibit and page prompts, and one session runner.

You need an authenticated GitHub Copilot CLI, your language runtime, and a terminal. You work directly in the minimal project under start-museum/<language>, not the finished app. The completed project under finished/<language>/museum-exhibit-studio is optional reference material only.

git clone https://github.com/github/copilot-sdk-workshop.git
cd copilot-sdk-workshop

Confirm the terminal is at the repository root before you change into a starter:

test "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)" = "$PWD"

The command must exit successfully without output.

You build the museum application in place, inside the starter directory for your language. There is no copy step. That means you are editing tracked repository files, so your work shows up in git status as modified files. That is expected and correct. If you want to start over from a clean starter, run git checkout -- . from the repository root to discard your edits.

Change into your language's starter directory now and stay there for every command in the museum workshop.

:::language dotnet Change into the .NET starter, then restore, build, and run its local entrypoint:

cd start-museum/dotnet
dotnet restore
dotnet build --no-restore
dotnet run --no-build

Pass condition: the build succeeds and the program prints === Museum Exhibit Studio starter === followed by Pre-built curator helpers are ready in Helpers/.

You work in start-museum/dotnet for the rest of the workshop, so keep this terminal here. From this folder, enter code . to open it in VS Code, or open the folder in your favorite editor.

Your helper module is Helpers/Curator*.cs in the MuseumExhibitStudio.Helpers namespace. You will write every lesson change in Program.cs. :::

:::language nodejs Change into the Node.js starter. Its lockfile preserves SDK 1.0.11 and the compatible @github/copilot 1.0.80 platform package:

cd start-museum/nodejs
npm ci --ignore-scripts --no-audit --fund=false
npm run build
npm start

Pass condition: the build succeeds and the program prints === Museum Exhibit Studio starter === followed by Pre-built curator helpers are ready in src/curator.ts.

You work in start-museum/nodejs for the rest of the workshop, so keep this terminal here. From this folder, enter code . to open it in VS Code, or open the folder in your favorite editor.

Your helper module is src/curator.ts, and the system messages are in src/system-messages.ts. You will write every lesson change in src/index.ts. :::

:::language python Change into the Python starter, create an isolated virtual environment, and install SDK 1.0.11:

cd start-museum/python
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
.venv/bin/python -m py_compile *.py
.venv/bin/python main.py

On Windows, the interpreter lives at .venv/Scripts/python.exe.

Pass condition: the source compiles and the program prints === Museum Exhibit Studio starter === followed by Pre-built curator helpers are ready in curator.py.

You work in start-museum/python for the rest of the workshop, so keep this terminal here. From this folder, enter code . to open it in VS Code, or open the folder in your favorite editor.

Your helper module is curator.py, and the system messages are in system_messages.py. You will write every lesson change in main.py. :::

:::language go Change into the Go starter, download the locked SDK 1.0.11 dependency, and build it:

cd start-museum/go
go mod download
go build -mod=readonly ./...
go run .

Pass condition: the build succeeds and the program prints === Museum Exhibit Studio starter === followed by Pre-built curator helpers are ready in curator.go.

You work in start-museum/go for the rest of the workshop, so keep this terminal here. From this folder, enter code . to open it in VS Code, or open the folder in your favorite editor.

Your helper module is curator.go, and the system messages are in system_messages.go. Both are in the same main package. You will write every lesson change in main.go. :::

:::language rust Change into the Rust starter, fetch locked dependencies, and check it:

cd start-museum/rust
cargo fetch --locked
cargo check --locked
cargo run --locked

Pass condition: Cargo leaves Cargo.lock unchanged and the program prints === Museum Exhibit Studio starter === followed by Pre-built curator helpers are ready in src/lib.rs.

You work in start-museum/rust for the rest of the workshop, so keep this terminal here. From this folder, enter code . to open it in VS Code, or open the folder in your favorite editor.

Your helper module is the museum_exhibit_studio library crate in src/lib.rs, with the system messages in src/system_messages.rs. You will write every lesson change in src/main.rs. :::

:::language java Change into the Maven starter, resolve SDK 1.0.11, compile, and run it with the included Maven Wrapper (no separate Maven install needed; on Windows, use mvnw.cmd instead of ./mvnw):

cd start-museum/java
./mvnw dependency:go-offline
./mvnw compile
./mvnw exec:java

Pass condition: Maven succeeds and the program prints === Museum Exhibit Studio starter === followed by Pre-built curator helpers are ready in src/main/java/workshop/.

You work in start-museum/java for the rest of the workshop, so keep this terminal here. From this folder, enter code . to open it in VS Code, or open the folder in your favorite editor.

Your helper module is src/main/java/workshop/Curator*.java. You will write every lesson change in src/main/java/workshop/MuseumExhibitStudio.java. :::

Open the entrypoint named at the end of your setup block above. Every place you write code is a named region between two marker comments:

>>> BEGIN generation-config | Step 4: INSERT | Step 6: REPLACE
<<< END generation-config

The BEGIN line lists every step that touches the region, so the file doubles as a map of the workshop. Each code block in a lesson is introduced by a line that names its region and one of two actions:

A block is always the complete contents of its region, so you never merge code by hand. Leave the marker lines, and the code outside the regions, exactly as they are.

The educator's approved facts are the only approved source, and the curator reaches them through one application-owned tool. Model memory is not verified museum knowledge, and prompt guidance is not an authorization boundary: only the allowlist and the permission handler decide what the session may actually do.

The SDK behind the curator is documented outside this workshop. These pages are worth having open alongside it.

• GitHub Copilot SDK how-tos: GitHub's own SDK documentation, including the prerequisites this preflight covers.
• Copilot SDK documentation map: the index for setup, authentication, features, and troubleshooting.
• Default setup: the bundled CLI: how the SDK locates and starts the Copilot CLI, and how to point it at a different binary.
• Debugging guide: the first place to look when a run fails before it produces any output.

:::language dotnet

• .NET SDK reference: package installation and a minimal example for the .NET SDK. :::

:::language nodejs

• Node.js SDK reference: package installation and a minimal example for the Node.js SDK. :::

:::language python

• Python SDK reference: package installation and a minimal example for the Python SDK. :::

:::language go

• Go SDK reference: module installation and a minimal example for the Go SDK. :::

:::language rust

• Rust SDK reference: crate installation and a minimal example for the Rust SDK. :::

:::language java

• Java SDK reference: dependency coordinates and a minimal example for the Java SDK. :::

Continue to Your first curator session.