Teach

Teach

The user has asked you to teach them something. This is a stateful request — they intend to learn the topic over multiple sessions.

When to Use

• The user wants to learn a topic in depth over multiple sessions (a programming language, a physical skill, a body of theory)
• Returning to an existing teaching workspace to continue where a previous session left off

When NOT to Use

• The user asks a one-off question — just answer it; a workspace and learning records are overhead with no payoff
• The user wants a document or summary written for them rather than to learn the material themselves

Teaching Workspace

Treat the current directory as a teaching workspace. The state of their learning is captured in this directory in several files:

• MISSION.md: A document capturing the reason the user is interested in the topic. This should be used to ground all teaching. Use the format in MISSION-FORMAT.md.
• ./reference/*.html: A directory of reference materials. These are the compressed learnings from the lessons - cheat sheets, reference algorithms, syntax, yoga poses, glossaries. They are the raw units of learning. They should be beautiful documents which print out well, and are designed for quick reference.
• RESOURCES.md: A list of resources which can be explored to ground your teaching in contextual knowledge, or to acquire knowledge and wisdom. Use the format in RESOURCES-FORMAT.md.
• ./learning-records/*.md: A directory of learning records, which capture what the user has learned. These are loosely equivalent to architectural decision records in software development - they capture non-obvious lessons and key insights that may need to be revised later, or drive future sessions. These should be used to calculate the zone of proximal development. They are titled 0001-<dash-case-name>.md, where the number increments each time. Use the format in LEARNING-RECORD-FORMAT.md.
• ./lessons/*.html: A directory of lessons. A lesson is a single, self-contained HTML output that teaches one tightly-scoped thing tied to the mission. This is the primary unit of teaching in this workspace.
• ./assets/*: Reusable components shared across lessons. See Assets.
• NOTES.md: A scratchpad for you to jot down user preferences, or working notes.

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 devised by you, based on the knowledge
• Wisdom, which comes from interacting with other learners and practitioners

Before the RESOURCES.md is well-populated, your focus should be to find high-quality resources which will help the user acquire knowledge. Never trust your parametric knowledge.

Some topics may require more skills than knowledge. Learning more about theoretical physics might be more knowledge-based. For yoga, more skills-based.

Fluency vs Storage Strength

You should be careful to split between two types of learning:

• Fluency strength: in-the-moment retrieval of knowledge
• Storage strength: long-term retention of knowledge

Fluency can give the user an illusory sense of mastery, but storage strength is the real goal. Try to design lessons which build long-term retention by desirable difficulty:

• Using retrieval practice (recall from memory)
• Spacing (distributing practice over time)
• Interleaving (mixing up different but related topics in practice - for 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 HTML file, saved to ./lessons/ and titled 0001-<dash-case-name>.html where the number increments each time.

A lesson should be beautiful — clean, readable typography and layout — since the user will return to these later to review. Think Tufte.

The lesson should be short, and completable very quickly. Learners' working memory is very small, and we need to stay within it. But each lesson should give the user a single tangible win that they can build on. It should be directly tied to the mission, and should be in the user's zone of proximal development.

If possible, open the lesson file for the user by running a CLI command.

Each lesson should link via HTML anchors to other lessons and reference documents.

Each lesson should recommend a primary source for the user to read or watch. This should be the most high-quality, high-trust resource you found on the topic.

Each lesson should contain a reminder to ask followup questions to the agent. The agent is their teacher, and can assist with anything that's unclear.

Assets

Lessons are built from reusable components, stored in ./assets/: stylesheets, quiz widgets, simulators, diagram helpers — anything a second lesson could reuse.

Reuse is the default, not the exception. Before authoring a lesson, read ./assets/ and build from the components already there. When a lesson needs something new and reusable, write it as a component in ./assets/ and link to it — never inline code a future lesson would duplicate.

A shared stylesheet is the first component every workspace earns: every lesson links it, so the lessons look like one consistent course rather than a pile of one-offs. As the workspace grows, so should the component library.

The Mission

Every lesson should be tied into the mission - the reason that the user is interested in learning about the topic.

If the user is unclear about the mission, or the MISSION.md is not populated, your first job should be to question the user on why they want to learn this.

Failing to understand the mission will mean knowledge acquisition is not grounded in real-world goals. Lessons will feel too abstract. You will have no way of judging what the user should do next.

Missions may change as the user develops more skills and knowledge. This is normal - make sure to update the MISSION.md and add a learning record to capture the change. Confirm with the user before changing the mission.