Create Dropproject Assignment

Creating a Drop Project assignment

Drop Project is a platform where students submit code that is automatically compiled, tested and graded against unit tests written by the teacher.

The single most important thing to understand: an assignment is not defined inside Drop Project. It is defined by a git repository that the teacher owns, containing a Maven project with the teacher's unit tests. Drop Project keeps a read-only clone of that repository. Creating an assignment therefore spans two systems, and Drop Project only owns half of it.

Drop Project never creates repositories, never pushes to them, and never installs deploy keys. If the Drop Project MCP server is not configured, do everything up to "push" and hand the teacher the remaining steps.

Before you start

Ask for whatever is missing - do not invent them:

• what the exercise is, and which functions or classes the students must write
• the assignment id (letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores only) and its human readable name
• the git repository to use, or permission to create one
• the language (Java or Kotlin) and the package name

1. Author the teacher's project

Copy templates/java/ as the starting point. It is a Maven project that passes Drop Project's validator, so start from it rather than writing a pom.xml from scratch - most validation errors come from a pom.xml that is missing one of the Drop Project specific bits.

pom.xml                         see templates/java/pom.xml
checkstyle.xml                  style rules applied to the students' code
instructions.md                 what the students see on the assignment page
src/main/java/<pkg>/...         the skeleton the students start from, if any
src/test/java/<pkg>/TestTeacher<Name>.java          the tests that grade them
src/test/java/<pkg>/TestTeacherHidden<Name>.java    optional, tests they can't see

Rules the validator enforces, worth getting right the first time:

• Test class names. Teacher tests must live in src/test in classes whose name starts with TestTeacher. Hidden tests, which students never see the source of, start with TestTeacherHidden. If the assignment also accepts student tests, every teacher class must use the TestTeacher prefix.
• Every test method needs a timeout, e.g. @Test(timeout = 500). A student's infinite loop otherwise blocks the evaluation queue. The template uses JUnit 4; JUnit 5 works too, with @Test plus @Timeout(1).
• Order the tests by naming them test_001_..., test_002_.... Students read the report top to bottom, so a deliberate order tells them where to start.
• If you add hidden tests, you must also pass hiddenTestsVisibility when creating the assignment, or validation fails with an error. SHOW_PROGRESS (students see how many hidden tests passed) is the usual choice.
• instructions.md is rendered on the assignment page. Write it for the students: what to implement, the expected signatures, and what is graded.

The rules above are what the validator enforces. What the tests should actually assert, and how much feedback each assertion should give, is a separate question with its own answers - use the write-dropproject-teacher-tests skill for it.

Write the tests against the exercise, then verify locally before pushing:

mvn -q test -Ddp.argLine=

dp.argLine is a property Drop Project sets at evaluation time; passing it empty keeps the pom.xml runnable outside Drop Project.

2. Create the repository and push

The repository can be private - Drop Project reads it with a deploy key, not with the teacher's credentials.

git init && git add . && git commit -m "Initial assignment"
gh repo create <owner>/<repo> --private --source=. --push

Note the SSH url, git@github.com:<owner>/<repo>.git. Drop Project rejects https urls.

3. Register the assignment

Call the create_assignment MCP tool. Required: assignmentId, assignmentName, gitRepositoryUrl. Everything else is optional; the ones that matter most often:

The tool returns an ssh public key. The assignment exists at this point but is inactive and disconnected.

4. Install the deploy key

Drop Project only reads the repository, so a read-only deploy key is enough and is what you should use. Write the returned key to a file and install it:

gh repo deploy-key add <key file> --repo <owner>/<repo> --title "Drop Project"

Without gh, paste it at https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/settings/keys, leaving write access unchecked.

5. Connect and fix the validation report

Call connect_assignment with the assignment id. Drop Project clones the repository and validates what it finds. If the clone fails, the deploy key is almost always the reason - the tool returns the public key again so you can retry step 4, then call connect_assignment again.

The validation report comes back with the response. Then loop until it has no errors:

1. read the report
2. fix the assignment's files
3. commit and push
4. call refresh_assignment to pull and revalidate

INFO entries are confirmations, not problems. WARNING entries are worth fixing but don't block anything. Only ERROR prevents activation.

Common report entries and what they mean:

6. Hand it over, inactive

A validated assignment is still inactive, and this is where the skill stops. Do not activate it on your own, not even when the report comes back clean: when students may start submitting is the teacher's decision, and an assignment opened early collects submissions they didn't ask for.

Confirm with get_assignment_info, give the teacher the assignment's url, and tell them it is ready but not yet open. Call set_assignment_active with active: true only when they ask for it, now or later. Activation is refused while the report has errors or while the assignment has never been connected, which is the intended safety net: students would otherwise submit to an assignment Drop Project can't evaluate.

Notes

• Never ask for, or handle, the private key. It is generated inside Drop Project and stays there.
• Changing an assignment's git repository url after creation is not supported. If the wrong url was used, the assignment has to be recreated.
• Editing the teacher's files later always means push then refresh_assignment. Drop Project does not poll the repository.
• Submissions that were already evaluated keep the grades they were given under the previous configuration; they are not re-evaluated automatically.