Fresh SSH onboarding trial — October 26, 2026

This instructor trial followed both starter READMEs on the same Mac from new GitHub template copies and real fresh SSH clones. It tested onboarding and preview modes, not completion of either student feature. Temporary visual probes were restored; brand decisions and RPS-001 remain unfinished.

What actually ran

Starter	Fresh setup and checks	Browser verification
IS117	New npm ci; project shell selected Node 24.20.0. Formatting/lint, 7 server + 10 Chromium cases passed.	Neutral page; missing-size feedback; M/Add gave bag count 1. Saved HTML/CSS/JS/SVG changed the open page automatically; HTML refresh emptied the bag. Plain preview waited until manual Reload. npm start also started development mode.
IS218	New independent .venv with existing Python 3.12.14; pinned requirements installed. Initial Black/Pylint, 13 non-browser + 4 Chromium passed. After the fix below, 13 + 5 passed in both the source project and fresh clone.	Unfinished notice and submitted moves displayed. Saved template/CSS/JS/Python edits refreshed automatically. Python edits restarted the server and returned a submitted round to GET without a resubmission prompt. Plain preview stayed unchanged until the documented restart/reopen.

No Reload or navigation action occurred between each development-mode save and its observed update. Both servers stopped and restarted in their existing clones; no second dependency installation was needed. Runtime/browser downloads reused caches, so this was fresh-clone setup, not a cold-machine installation.

Stops and guesses corrected

• Which terminal owns the website? IS117 now has the agent prepare/check dependencies, then the learner runs the persistent preview in the original class terminal. Agent commands use its separate project terminal. Both READMEs identify Ctrl+C and resuming an existing server before starting another.
• Which URL and mode? IS117 reproduced a port collision by starting plain preview while development was still running. Stop before switching and reopen the new server's printed address. Keep a chosen PORT prefix on later starts. In Python plain mode, restart after Python/template edits; CSS/JS needs manual refresh.
• An occupied port is not broken setup. Port 5050 belonged to an existing process. It was left running; the documented PORT=5051 command worked. The alternate is now beside the normal startup command, not only on the help page. IS117 documents its 5175 fallback and leaves 5174 for prepared checks.
• The available Python was not the class Python. Host python3 was 3.14.7 and python3.12 was absent from PATH. The agent located/verified an already installed 3.12 interpreter and created a new environment from it. No system Python replacement or copied environment.
• Fresh copy and return later. IS218 now waits for generated README/files, confirms the full path plus SSH origin, and reuses an existing clone. Both new copies were ready in this trial; an empty-clone failure was not reproduced here.

A real defect found while switching modes

An already-open IS218 development page kept requesting /__dev__/revision after the server switched to plain mode, flooding its terminal with 404s. The client now stops polling when that route returns 404; transient restart/network failures retain retry behavior. The regression failed against the old client and passed with the fix. In the actual browser/server switch after the patch, one 404 was logged and no further polls followed. Ordinary request/error logging remains checked.

Follow-up tracked in IS117 issue 10 and IS218 issue 3.

Saved browser evidence

These are temporary probe edits, not a solved student design. The IS117 image shows changed JavaScript copy, accent CSS and a separately refreshed SVG. The IS218 image shows a saved template and cleared round. Probe edits were restored after verification.

Limits

Computer Use blocked native Terminal control. Commands ran on this Mac through the terminal tool; browser interactions and screenshots used Computer Use. Native Terminal input, ChatGPT desktop folder-picker interaction, Windows/WSL and real student learning were not verified. The coaching contracts were read and reviewed; these results establish the observed setup/preview behavior, not learning outcomes.

Disposable template copies are IS117 onboarding 1026 and IS218 onboarding 1026. Their remote baseline copies and local trial evidence are preserved for review; the active student links point to the unfinished instructor templates.