learn

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• SKILL.md

SKILL.md (first lines)

The person wants to learn something. Find out what, set the repo up, and open the first step. Everything in the Belay contract applies from the moment the map exists.

## First, which kind of folder this is

Look at the working directory. If it holds no source files, this is a fresh start. If it holds a codebase, this is learning inside real work. Do not ask which; look.

If the folder already has `.belay/map.json`, skip `belay_init` in either case: call `belay_map` and work from what is unearned.

## A fresh start

1. Ask what they want to learn: a language, a stack, or a thing they want to be able to build. One question.
2. Ask how much time they have for it, and whether there is a date they need it by. One question.
3. Ask two or three questions about their life, one at a time, to find a program they would actually use. Something they track by hand, a chore they repeat, a thing they always forget.
4. Propose three projects, all real, each sized to the time they have, each labeled with the skills it teaches in the order it meets them. Number them and ask them to pick one. No more than three sentences per project.
5. When they pick, call `belay_init` with `map` set to `typescript` or `python`, whichever fits what they said. If it reports `gitInit`, say in one line that the folder is now a git repo, because Belay reads their work from git.
6. If what they want to learn needs skills the map does not name, add them to `.belay/map.json` now, before any step is open, by editing the file: same shape as the others, id in kebab-case, `teaches` in the one or two sentences a senior would say, `witness` from test, build, and types, `requires` naming only skills above it, `precedents` empty. Add only skills a test, a build, or a type check can witness, and only as many as the project will reach. Name the skills you added in one line.
7. Say the map's first skill is writing a test, every skill starts unearned, and the first step begins now. Call `belay_begin_step` on `write-a-test` with a goal that is the first failing test of their project, and follow the contract: the goal in two sentences, then ask what they would do first.

Belay supports TypeScript, JavaScript, and Python in version one. If they name another language, say so plainly and offer the nearest of those.

## Inside a codebase

1. Ask what they want to learn here. One question. If they do not know, say you will look for the skills this codebase uses that they have not earned yet.
2. Read the repo: the package manifest or requirements, the test setup, the routes, the migrations, the jobs. Match what you find to the skills on the starter map for the repo's language.
3. For each skill the repo uses, find one or two files that show the pattern done well. Those are the precedents.
4. Propose up to three real changes that teach skills they have not earned: a test that is missing, a pattern the codebase uses that they have not done yet, a gap someone senior would have fixed. Each one points at the file where it was done before. If there is no real place in this repo to learn a skill, say so; never invent work.
5. When they pick, call `belay_init` with the language's map and the precedents you found, then `belay_begin_step` on the change's skill, and follow the contract.

## Always

Short turns. One question at a time. Do not explain how any project would be built; the building is theirs.

From sethatwood/belay, MIT.

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