Update Teachable lessons from Markdown files

1. Select the course in the Teachable admin sidebar, open the Curriculum tab and click the lesson name to open the Lesson Editor.
2. Click the Edit icon on the Text & Image block and replace the text in the WYSIWYG editor, fixing headings, lists and links by hand; Teachable links need http:// or https:// in front of the URL.
3. Click Save. On a published lesson, Teachable shows the change to students right away.
4. For a new lesson, click New lesson inside a section, add the content, then publish it with the Publish button or with Bulk edit on the Curriculum tab.
5. Repeat for every changed lesson. Teachable gives no signal of which lessons no longer match your source files, and a revision saved into the wrong lesson is live at once.

Compare my Python course with the Markdown files in ./scripts, update the lessons that changed, and ask me before touching published ones.

1. 01

   Match every file to a lesson

   The agent reads get_curriculum and pairs each Markdown file with a lesson by its title, or by a lesson_id you keep at the top of the file. A file with no match becomes a proposed new lesson in the section you name. It is never pasted into the closest-sounding lesson.

2. 02

   Diff before writing

   get_lesson gives the text Teachable holds now. Lessons that already match the file are skipped, and every changed one gets a short before and after. When a lesson has two Text & Image blocks, the agent asks which one the file replaces.

3. 03

   Leave media and quizzes alone

   Video, PDF, quiz and other blocks keep their place. If the new text mentions a video or quiz the lesson lacks, that goes in the report rather than into a made-up block. A Lesson Summary block is flagged as well, because Teachable wrote it with AI from the old text.

4. 04

   Drafts go in, live lessons wait

   Unpublished lessons get their new text at once, and new lessons go in through create_lesson as drafts. For a published lesson, update_lesson waits for your OK on the diff, since students see the change on save.

5. 05

   Publish as one decision

   When you have read the drafts, publish_lesson releases them together. The report names any section still hidden because every lesson in it is unpublished.

Python for Beginners: 15 Markdown files, 14 matched to lessons.
Unchanged and skipped: 10 lessons.
Updated after your OK: Lesson 3: Functions, Lesson 7: Dictionaries (published, live now).
Updated as draft: Lesson 12: Packaging.
New draft: Lesson 15: Testing, at the end of Section 4: Projects.
Check by hand: Lesson 7 has a Lesson Summary block written for the old text.

• Teachable creates every new lesson unpublished and hides a whole section from students when all of its lessons are unpublished.
• Teachable keeps read-only code in a separate Code Example block, apart from the Text & Image block that holds the lesson text.
• Deleting a Teachable lesson is permanent, and videos inside a deleted lesson cannot be recovered within Teachable, so rewriting a lesson is safer than deleting and recreating it.
• Publishing Teachable lessons does not make a course enrollable; that needs the publish and product visibility settings on the course's Information tab.
• Teachable's Bulk upload, on paid plans only, adds files in alphabetical order, one lesson per file, so file names decide the lesson order.

update_lesson and publish_lesson ask for your OK by default. To run it on a schedule without you, switch confirmation off for those tools in your dashboard.

Sources: Teachable Help: Add Lesson Content · Teachable Help: Sections and Lessons · Teachable API reference index · Teachable Help: Teachable MCP

curl https://cotlet.dev/api/v1/teachable/update_lesson \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $COTLET_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"course_id":"1204512","lesson_id":"35120874","title":"Lesson 3: Functions","body_markdown":"# Functions\n\nA function groups steps you want to reuse."}'

{
  "lesson_id": "35120874",
  "name": "Lesson 3: Functions",
  "updated_block_id": "b_5521",
  "published": true,
  "updated_at": "2026-10-11T09:20:00+02:00"
}

MCP: add https://cotlet.dev/mcp/v1 with the same key; the tool is teachable_update_lesson. Example data.

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