CS 128 Classroom
Reliable GitHub repository management solution addressing GitHub Classroom limitations
The Problem We Solve
GitHub Classroom suffers from a critical reliability flaw that disrupts large-scale programming education. Students successfully accept assignments and repositories are created, but their access invitations become invalidated almost immediately.
This creates a frustrating scenario: repositories exist but remain inaccessible. Instructors can see pending invitations in their dashboard, but students cannot accept them. Even resending invitations fails to restore access.
The only recourse is deleting student repositories and forcing re-acceptance—a time-consuming process that doesn’t always work and scales poorly for courses with hundreds of students.
For CS 128, serving hundreds of students each semester, this bug transforms what should be seamless assignment distribution into a constant source of technical support requests, diverting valuable instructional time from programming education to troubleshooting access issues.
Our Solution
CS 128 Classroom eliminates GitHub Classroom’s reliability problems through direct API integration. Rather than relying on GitHub’s problematic invitation system, we manage repository access directly.
Students authenticate using our existing CS128 identity service and immediately accept assignments. This triggers automatic creation of private repositories with immediate, stable access permissions—no invitations required.
By bypassing GitHub Classroom’s invitation mechanism entirely, we ensure students gain immediate read-write access to their repositories without the delays, failures, and administrative overhead that plagued our previous workflow.
Technical Implementation
The platform is built with Node.js and integrates directly with GitHub’s API to manage:
- Repository creation
- Permission management
- Student access control
Authentication is handled through OAuth2 using our existing CS128 identity infrastructure, ensuring seamless integration with the course ecosystem.
Key Technical Features
- Automated repository creation from instructor templates
- Direct collaborator management via the GitHub API (bypassing invitations)
- Assignment categories for organizational flexibility
- Student repository lookup and management tools
- Publishing controls with release and due dates
- Real-time assignment acceptance tracking
- Comprehensive error handling and retry logic
- Role-based access control for students and instructors
Educational Impact
As of Fall 2025, the platform has successfully served 500+ students and created thousands of repositories without any invitation failures.
Students can now accept assignments and begin coding immediately, rather than encountering access issues that require instructor intervention.
The categorized assignment system supports our diverse course structure—MPs, daily lesson activities, and recitation exercises. Publishing controls let instructors prepare assignments in advance and release them at precisely the right time. Due date tracking further helps students manage their workload effectively.
Administrative overhead has been dramatically reduced. What once required manual troubleshooting of failed invitations and repository deletions now works automatically. The ability to quickly look up a student’s repository status streamlines support and debugging, allowing instructors to focus on teaching programming concepts rather than debugging GitHub Classroom.
Reliability Results
Since deployment, we have observed zero instances of the invitation invalidation bug.
The direct API approach has proven far more reliable than GitHub Classroom’s invitation system. Additionally, comprehensive logging enables quick identification and resolution of any unexpected issues.
The only constraints encountered are GitHub’s API rate limits:
- No more than 80 content-generating requests per minute
- No more than 500 content-generating requests per hour
We have exceeded these limits occasionally, but the predictable nature of these constraints makes them manageable through intelligent request scheduling and batching.