A pack of Claude Code skills that turn Claude into a patient teacher for absolute beginners — people learning to code while building. Capability stays full; what changes is how Claude communicates, paces, and proposes work, so a non-programmer can keep up and learn enough to outgrow the pack.
Built on three ideas:
- Recommend, never ask open-ended. Beginners freeze at "what kind of database do you want?" Replace with "I suggest SQLite because it's one file and needs no setup. Alternatives: Postgres, no DB yet. SQLite — yes?"
- One new concept per turn. Pacing beats impressiveness. Every turn ends with three sections: "What we did / What it means / What's next." The "next" is always a concrete yes/no proposal.
- Auto-obsolescence. Every skill has a graduation signal — observable behavior showing the user has internalized the concept. When the signal appears, the skill softens. The teaching loop fades; the safety net (block-tier guard-rails) does not.
The pack does not reduce Claude Code's capability. Everything Claude Code can normally do, it can still do — these skills change voice, pacing, and confirmation, not power.
| # | Name | Mode | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | coding-mentor |
always-on | Sets the patient-teacher tone every other skill speaks in. |
| 2 | guard-rails |
always-on | Catches anti-patterns before they happen — force-pushes, secret commits, rm -rf, pasted keys. Two tiers (block / warn). |
| 3 | explain-this-project |
reactive | Tours an unfamiliar codebase. 5–8 key files, one-line role each, plus a health check. |
| 4 | safe-mode |
on-demand | Gates every write/delete/install behind explicit "yes." Reads stay free. |
| 5 | translate-the-error |
reactive | Decodes errors into plain English, names the category, proposes (but doesn't apply) a fix. |
| 6 | what-changed |
reactive | Recap hook after dense turns — files touched, why, what's now possible, what to watch. |
| 7 | next-step |
reactive | Surveys state, lists three concrete options, recommends one. For when the user is stuck. |
| 8 | using-git |
first-encounter | Teaches git's mental model (snapshots, working dir / staging / repo, branches as parallel timelines). |
| 9 | using-github |
first-encounter | Splits git from GitHub. Auth (HTTPS+PAT recommended), remotes, fork vs clone, PR lifecycle. |
| 10 | using-env-vars |
first-encounter | .env lifecycle, secrets out of git, per-platform loading, dev vs prod. |
| 11 | installing-dependencies |
first-encounter | Package managers, manifest vs lockfile, semver, project-local vs global, why node_modules/ is gitignored. |
| 12 | running-locally |
first-encounter | Runtime, dev server as a long-running process, localhost, ports, hot reload, Ctrl+C. |
Plus two shared assets:
glossary.md— canonical plain-English definitions of every term any skill uses. One source of truth.anti-patterns.md— the catalogguard-railswatches for. Each entry taggedblock(stop, ask) orwarn(advise, proceed).
Two paths.
Path 1 — local plugin from this repo:
git clone https://github.com/franciscomelloc/coding-mentor-pack.git
claude --plugin-dir=./coding-mentor-packPath 2 — copy individual skills into ~/.claude/skills/:
git clone https://github.com/franciscomelloc/coding-mentor-pack.git
cp -r coding-mentor-pack/skills/* ~/.claude/skills/Then copy glossary.md and anti-patterns.md somewhere your skills can reference them (next to the skill folders works). Restart Claude Code.
Marketplace status: not yet listed on claude.com/plugins. When/if it ships there, a third one-click install path will be added here.
The examples/ folder contains before/after conversation transcripts showing what changes when the pack is active:
beginner-clones-repo.md— first-time clone of a repo the user doesn't understandbeginner-hits-error.md— an error the user pastes in panicbeginner-first-commit.md— first git commit and push to GitHub
Each shows the same beginner scenario with vanilla Claude Code vs Claude Code + this pack, so you can see the difference in voice, pacing, and structure.
Friction reports welcome. If a skill misfires, an anti-pattern is missing, or the graduation signal is wrong, open an issue with:
- The conversation snippet (sanitized — no real keys, please).
- What the skill did vs what would have helped.
- A proposed fix to the SKILL.md (if you have one).
Pull requests against any of the 12 SKILL.md files, the glossary, or the anti-pattern catalog are welcome. Keep the voice — direct, second-person, no fluff.
The pack is written in English. Claude Code translates per-conversation if the user works in another language; the skills themselves stay English to keep one source of truth.
MIT — see LICENSE.