Dashboard edits: check:drift

  1. Why the audit log
  2. Where it starts from
  3. Reading the report
  4. Exit codes
  5. Who made each edit

A push replaces Skilljar’s content with your files, so a lesson edited in the Skilljar dashboard since your last pull loses that edit. check:drift lists those edits before you push.

syncjar check:drift && syncjar push

It needs a v2 client with audit:read, lessons:read and courses:read. It makes GET requests and runs git log, and nothing else.

Why the audit log

A dashboard edit does move the course’s modified_at, but that only says the course changed, not what or when. And an edit made through the API, by a push from another checkout or any other tool, moves no timestamp at all.

Skilljar’s audit log records dashboard actions, one event per edit, with the lesson and the kind of change. It doesn’t record API writes, so a push’s own writes never show up as drift.

The flip side: an edit made through the API, for example a push from someone else’s checkout, is invisible to check:drift. If several people push, pull is still the way to bring everything in line.

Where it starts from 

syncjar check:drift                       # since the last pull commit in the content repo
syncjar check:drift --since 2026-10-01    # since a date, UTC
syncjar check:drift --since 59f6afa1      # since a commit in the content repo
syncjar check:drift --course onboarding   # only courses whose directory, id or title matches
syncjar check:drift --json                # for scripts

By default it starts from the newest commit in the content repository whose subject says it pulled or synced from Skilljar. A subject counts when it:

  • starts with sync or pull, optionally after a conventional-commit type such as chore(content):; for example Pull from Skilljar or content: pull lesson edits; or
  • contains sync Skilljar, synced Skilljar or synced from Skilljar anywhere.

So commit your pulls with a subject like that. It doesn’t start from the newest commit of any kind: a local edit committed after a dashboard edit would move the start past that edit and hide it.

If you recorded dashboard edits by hand in a commit with another subject, they’ll show up again; pass --since <that commit> to start after it.

Reading the report

The report is grouped by course, then lesson, with one line per kind of change, a count and a date range.

Mark Meaning
! Lesson content: HTML, VIDEO, QUIZ, downloads. A push destroys these, so they come first
~ Structure: creations, deletions, reorders, publishes
· Titles, descriptions and flags

Lessons and courses that aren’t in your local tree are looked up and reported as new in Skilljar, never pulled, or deleted.

Exit codes

Code Meaning
0 Nothing was edited
2 Something was
1 An error

So check:drift && syncjar push pushes only when nothing was edited.

Who made each edit

The audit log names the dashboard user behind each event. The report leaves them out. --show-actors adds them, in an interactive terminal only: it’s refused with --json, or when the output isn’t a terminal, so names can’t end up in a CI log or a file.