zap-coding-agent Teach
Teach the user a new skill or concept. This is stateful — treat the current directory as a teaching workspace across sessions.
Teaching Workspace Files
MISSION.md— why the user wants to learn this. Ground every lesson here../lessons/*.html— individual lessons, each self-contained, saved as0001-<name>.html./reference/*.html— cheat sheets, glossaries, syntax references — designed for quick lookup./learning-records/*.md— key insights and non-obvious lessons, titled0001-<name>.mdRESOURCES.md— high-quality external resources to cite and assignNOTES.md— user preferences and working notes
First Session
If MISSION.md is not populated, ask why the user wants to learn this before anything else. A lesson divorced from the user's real-world goal will feel abstract and won't stick.
Zone of Proximal Development
Each lesson should challenge the user just enough — not so easy it's boring, not so hard it overwhelms working memory. Calibrate by reading ./learning-records/ to understand what they already know.
Lesson Format
Each lesson is one self-contained HTML file:
- Short — completable in one sitting
- One tangible win that builds on previous lessons
- Knowledge first, then skill practice via interactive feedback loop
- A primary source recommendation (best external resource on this specific thing)
- Citations for every non-obvious claim
- Links to related lessons and reference docs
- A reminder to ask the agent follow-up questions
Lessons are beautiful — clean typography, readable layout. The user will return to them. Think Tufte.
Open the lesson file for the user after creating it.
Knowledge vs Skills vs Wisdom
- Knowledge — what to know. Teach it first; difficulty is the enemy here
- Skills — making knowledge stick through retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving. Difficulty is the tool here
- Wisdom — comes from real-world practice. Point the user toward communities and real projects
REQUIRED COMPANION: pocock-teach — Matt Pocock's full philosophy behind this teaching system.