Bootstrap

Bootstrap a learning sub-project

This skill mints a new sub-project under the agentic-study-environment harness. A sub-project is a self-contained folder where a learner works through a single topic with the agent as tutor, scaffolded by the harness's conventions.

When to use

The user wants to start studying something new. They might say "bootstrap a project to learn TASEP", "create a sub-project for Spanish vocabulary", "set up a learning project for the seam carving paper", or similar. The signal is: a topic they want to learn, an intent to study it under the harness.

This skill does NOT run a teaching session — that's start-session. It only sets up the scaffolding.

What you need from the user

Required (ask if missing — do not invent):

• a sub-project name (becomes the directory name, e.g. seam-carver, spanish-b2, tasep)
• a one-line learning goal that captures what the user wants to learn

Optional (use if supplied; do not prompt for them — they can be filled later via the sub-project's AGENTS.md):

• a Domain — controls which overlay applies during sessions. Known values: coding, speech-therapy (synonym: logopedics), legal-documents (synonyms: official-documents, public-documents), academic-research (synonyms: research, scholarship), study (the neutral default), or any user-supplied custom value. If unset, the sub-project falls back to the neutral default.
• a Language — BCP 47 tag (e.g. de, es, fr) overriding the conversational language for chat replies inside this sub-project. Default is English unless an optional .studyenv/AGENTS.md (or .studyenv/CLAUDE.md) sets otherwise. Structural tokens (status legends, field names, trigger words) stay in English regardless — see ../../reference/conventions.md for the exact rules.
• Tools & Materials — anything the user already knows they'll work with (a language + version for coding, a textbook, a notation convention, …).
• Tracking — global (default) or local-only. global registers the sub-project in the cross-project .studyenv/PROGRESS.md tracker (the umbrella mode). local-only keeps just the sub-project's own PROGRESS.md and skips the cross-project tracker entirely — for a lone learning project where no global index is wanted. Default to global when unstated; do not prompt. See ../../reference/conventions.md → Tracking scope.
• A note that source materials are already in place — controls the starting status of the sub-project.

Refuse to overwrite

If .studyenv/<sub-project-name>/ already exists, stop and ask the user. Never overwrite an existing sub-project. If the user wants to wipe and start over, they can delete the directory themselves and re-invoke. A sub-project may carry weeks of work in its PROGRESS.md and work/ — silent overwrite would be destructive.

What to create

Everything the harness generates lives under .studyenv/ at the current working directory (the host project root). Create .studyenv/ if it does not yet exist, then create:

1. .studyenv/<name>/ — the sub-project directory.
2. .studyenv/<name>/source-materials/ — empty placeholder for the user to drop PDFs, notes, links, prepared code projects.
3. .studyenv/<name>/AGENTS.md — render from ../../templates/sub-project-agents.md (relative to this SKILL.md). Substitute <name>, the learning goal(s), and any supplied Domain: / Language: / Tools & Materials. If Domain: was not supplied, omit the line entirely (do not leave a blank or a placeholder string). Same for Language:. If Tracking: local-only was requested, write that line; otherwise (the global default) omit the Tracking: line. If Tools & Materials were not supplied, keep the placeholder text TBD when setting curriculum.
4. .studyenv/<name>/CLAUDE.md — render from ../../templates/sub-project-claude.md. It is a compatibility pointer to .studyenv/<name>/AGENTS.md.
5. .studyenv/<name>/PROGRESS.md — render from ../../templates/sub-project-progress.md. Status opens at created, or at ready if the user mentioned source materials are already in place.

Do NOT create .studyenv/<name>/ai-agent-materials/ or .studyenv/<name>/work/. The set-curriculum skill creates ai-agent-materials/; sessions create work/ on demand per the active domain overlay.

Update the cross-project tracker (.studyenv/PROGRESS.md)

If Tracking: local-only was requested, skip this entire section — do not create or register .studyenv/PROGRESS.md. The sub-project's own PROGRESS.md is its only tracker (see ../../reference/conventions.md → Tracking scope).

Otherwise (the global default), after creating the sub-project, register it in the cross-project tracker at .studyenv/PROGRESS.md. Because .studyenv/ is harness-owned, this file is always either the harness tracker or absent — there is no foreign file to collide with and no shape to detect.

The tracker structure (a # PROGRESS.md — studyenv heading, a ## Projects table, ## Grand Topics Covered, and ## Journal) is documented in ../../reference/conventions.md → .studyenv/PROGRESS.md structure.

• If .studyenv/PROGRESS.md does not exist (first bootstrap in this host), create it from the canonical structure, then add this sub-project's row and Journal entry.
• If it exists, append the row and dated Journal entry without touching prior rows or entries.

The Projects row uses the matching status (created or ready) and a one-line note (typically the learning goal, abbreviated); the Journal gets an entry under today's date describing the bootstrap.

Whatever the outcome, the sub-project directory (.studyenv/<name>/) is already created and self-contained — its own PROGRESS.md is the source of truth; the tracker is only an index.

Confirm and prompt for materials

After scaffolding is in place:

• Tell the user concisely what was created (paths, opening status). For local-only, note that the sub-project is self-tracked and was not registered in a cross-project tracker.
• Prompt the user to drop source materials into .studyenv/<name>/source-materials/ — PDFs, papers, links, prepared code projects, exercise sheets, anything.
• If the user supplies materials in the same turn (or confirms they've already added some), flip the sub-project's PROGRESS.md Status line from created to ready — and the .studyenv/PROGRESS.md Projects row too, unless this is a local-only sub-project (which has no Projects row).

Why these rules

• The harness is structural — every sub-project follows the same layout so the agent can navigate any of them without re-learning the conventions. The templates enforce that.
• Everything generated goes under .studyenv/ so the harness footprint is fully contained and portable — the host project stays clean, and the whole study environment can be gitignored, deleted, zipped, or synced as one folder. The harness never touches the host's own root files.
• Domain and Language stay optional and omitted-when-unset rather than written as placeholders, because the agent uses presence/absence of those fields at session time to decide whether to load an overlay or switch conversational language. A placeholder string would falsely trigger.
• ai-agent-materials/ and work/ are deliberately not created here. Bootstrap should be cheap and reversible; the heavier folders appear when their work actually begins.
• Tracking: local-only exists so the harness can be dropped onto a single existing project as a lone learning unit without spinning up (or polluting) a cross-project index. It's the opt-out from the umbrella; global stays the default so the common multi-sub-project case needs no flag.

Related skills

• After bootstrap, the user typically runs set-curriculum once source materials are in place, then start-session (or onboard-session, for getting up to speed on an existing artifact) to actually study.
• stop-session updates the per-project PROGRESS.md and .studyenv/PROGRESS.md.