Teach

teach — stateful multi-session teaching

Teach the user a concept over multiple sessions. The current directory is a stateful teaching workspace — the state of their learning is captured in files there. Build exercises, check understanding, adapt pace to the learner.

This skill is for learning, not building. If the user wants to build something, route to grill / plan / build instead.

OWNERSHIP

Owns: the teaching workspace files (MISSION.md, RESOURCES.md, learning-records/, lessons/, reference/, NOTES.md). Reads: CONTEXT.md if it exists (for canonical terms in the teaching domain). MUST NOT write plan artifacts. Teaching workspace is separate from plan artifacts.

WHEN (user-invoked)

• User says "teach me", "I want to learn", "explain over time", "help me understand", "course on", "tutorial".
• User wants to learn a concept, not build something.

THE TEACHING WORKSPACE

Treat the current directory as a teaching workspace. State is captured in:

• MISSION.md — the reason the user is interested in the topic. Grounds all teaching.
• ./reference/* — reference materials: compressed learnings, cheat sheets, reference algorithms, syntax, glossaries. The raw units of learning. Beautiful documents that print well and are designed for quick reference.
• RESOURCES.md — a list of resources to ground teaching in contextual knowledge, or to acquire knowledge/wisdom.
• ./learning-records/*.md — learning records, capturing what the user has learned. Loosely equivalent to ADRs — non-obvious lessons and key insights that may need revision later, or drive future sessions. Used to calculate the zone of proximal development. Titled 0001-<slug>.md, incrementing.
• ./lessons/* — lessons. A lesson is a single, self-contained output that teaches one tightly-scoped thing tied to the mission. The primary unit of teaching.
• NOTES.md — scratchpad for user preferences and working notes.

Create files lazily — only when you have something to write.

PHILOSOPHY

To learn at a deep level, the user needs three things:

• Knowledge, captured from high-quality, high-trust resources.
• Skills, acquired through highly-relevant interactive lessons you devise, based on the knowledge.
• Wisdom, which comes from interacting with other learners and practitioners.

Before RESOURCES.md is well-populated, your focus is to find high-quality resources. NEVER trust your parametric knowledge alone — find sources and cite them (invoke the research loop if external knowledge is needed). Some topics need more skills than knowledge (theoretical physics = knowledge-heavy; yoga = skills-heavy).

Fluency vs storage strength

Split between two types of learning:

• Fluency strength — in-the-moment retrieval.
• Storage strength — long-term retention.

Fluency gives an illusory sense of mastery, but storage strength is the real goal. Design lessons that build long-term retention by desirable difficulty:

• Retrieval practice (recall from memory).
• Spacing (distribute practice over time).
• Interleaving (mix related topics in practice — skills practice only).

LESSONS

A lesson is the main thing you produce — the unit in which knowledge and skills reach the user. Each lesson is one self-contained file, saved to ./lessons/ and titled 0001-<slug>.<ext> where the number increments each time.

Lesson design

• Tightly scoped to one thing tied to the mission.
• Interactive — the user does, not just reads.
• Checks understanding (retrieval practice).
• Adapts to the learner's pace (use learning-records/ to find the zone of proximal development).
• Builds storage strength, not just fluency.

SESSION FLOW

1. Read MISSION.md + the latest learning-records/ to recall where the learner is.
2. Decide the next lesson (or continue an in-progress one) based on the zone of proximal development.
3. If RESOURCES.md is thin, prioritize finding high-quality resources (via research) before teaching.
4. Deliver the lesson. Check understanding. Record insights in a new learning-records/ entry.
5. Update NOTES.md with any preferences observed.

BOUNDARIES

• MUST treat the current directory as a stateful teaching workspace.
• MUST NOT trust parametric knowledge alone — find and cite sources (via research).
• MUST design for storage strength, not just fluency.
• MUST create files lazily — only when there's something to write.
• MUST check understanding with retrieval practice.
• MUST adapt pace to the learner (zone of proximal development).
• MUST NOT write plan artifacts. Teaching workspace is separate.