DEV3 AI Course Builder for LearnDash & Tutor LMS

WordPress plugin that turns a topic, an outline or a PDF/DOCX into an editable course tree, drafts lessons and quizzes with AI, then builds it natively in Tutor LMS, LearnDash or plain pages, with retry-safe steps and undo. Free download: sign in and click Download ZIP. Add your own Google AI Studio (Gemini) API key to switch on the AI features; the documentation says which features work without one.

How it works

We built DEV3 AI Course Builder as a WordPress plugin in PHP with a React admin. The AI runs on the Google Gemini API with the site owner's own key; nothing it writes is saved without a click.

Key design decisions

• Blueprint first. A course is a JSON tree (course details, sections, lessons, topics, quizzes, questions, certificate text) stored in its own table. Nothing exists in the LMS until Create course.
• Normalise every input. AI outlines, pasted outlines, imported JSON and editor saves all pass through Tree::normalize(), which assigns ids, clamps lengths and repairs questions per type (exactly one correct answer for single choice, True/False rebuilt, blanks marked with one placeholder).
• One adapter contract, three targets. Tutor LMS, LearnDash and a no-LMS pages adapter each implement create_course, create_section, create_lesson, create_topic, create_quiz, finalize and cleanup, and declare what they support.
• Retry-safe build steps. The build is a background job of ordered steps. Each step records node id → post id in the blueprint before the next one runs, so a retried step finds its post and skips it.
• Undo by tag. Every created post carries the blueprint id and node id in post meta. Undo build trashes (or deletes) exactly those posts and removes Tutor's question rows.
• Works without AI. Outline parser for Markdown headings and lists, DOCX and PDF text extraction, templates, a manual tree editor and heuristic quiz questions.

Architecture

The admin app has a dashboard, a New course screen (topic, outline or PDF/DOCX source), the course builder, a courses list with JSON import and export, a quiz generator for existing lessons and a lesson rewriter with undo history. Lesson Markdown becomes native Gutenberg blocks. A Course Certificate block and shortcode print a certificate for learners who completed the course. The API client, background jobs, encryption and settings screens come from a shared core used across DEV3's plugins.

What's in the download

• The installable plugin zip: upload it through Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
• Full HTML documentation (installation, settings, hooks, FAQ).

Requirements

• WordPress 6.0 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer
• Optional: Tutor LMS (free) or LearnDash 4.x. Without an LMS, courses are created as WordPress pages
• Optional: a Google Gemini API key for the DEV3 AI features. Without one, the outline parser, templates, manual editor and basic quiz questions all still work

Learn more

• How we built it: the AI Course Builder case study
• Engineering write-up on the DEV3 blog
• Also free in the DEV3 AI Membership, Learning & Support Plugins Bundle with every other Membership, Learning & Support plugin.