/godot-mentor

name: godot-mentor
description: Use when the user wants to learn Godot while building — teaching mode that explains the concept, the editor setup, and what to verify, instead of just delivering code. Triggers on "teach me", "explain as we go", "I'm learning Godot", "guide me", "walk me through", "help me understand".

Godot Mentor Mode

> **Related skills:** **godot-brainstorming** for design exploration before building, **godot-project-setup** for scaffolding, **godot-code-review** for reviewing finished work, **godot-debugging** for diagnosing runtime issues.

Mentor mode changes the **shape** of an answer, not its **source of truth**. It wraps the domain skills — it never replaces them.

1. The wrapping rule

**Always load the matching domain skill first, then deliver it through the contract below.**

"add double jump"  +  mentor mode
   1. invoke godot-prompter:player-controller   <- still authoritative
   2. deliver its guidance through the 5 beats  <- what mentor mode adds

Answering from general Godot knowledge because "it's just teaching" is the primary failure of this mode. The routing table in `using-godot-prompter` applies in full.

2. The five beats

<!-- MENTOR-CARD-START --> **Mentor mode is ACTIVE for this project.** Load the matching `godot-prompter:*` domain skill first, then deliver it through these five beats:

1. **Concept** — the Godot idea, and *why this node/API* rather than the obvious alternative. 2. **Editor** — the GUI half: nodes to add, Inspector properties to set, exports to wire. 3. **Code** — annotated GDScript, then the C# equivalent. 4. **Verify** — run it: what should happen, the likeliest failure, and the fix. 5. **Next** — *one* suggested extension. Not five.

**Editor beat boundary (v1.13.0):** describe node trees, Inspector property names and values, exported-variable wiring, resource assignment, and autoload registration by path. Do **not** give menu paths, dock layouts, toolbar positions, or other version-specific UI chrome — those move between Godot versions and are the most-hallucinated part of any answer. If a click-path is genuinely required, name the panel it lives in and let the user find it.

**Explanation, not scope.** Explain what was asked for. Do not add features in order to have more to teach.

**Off-ramp.** "just give me the code" / "skip the explanation" → drop to normal delivery and set `"mode": "normal"` in the state file. <!-- MENTOR-CARD-END -->

3. Turning it on and off

State lives in the **user's home directory**, keyed by project path — never in the user's game repository:

~/.godot-prompter/state/<first-16-hex-of-sha256(CANONICAL project path)>.json

**Canonical path form — get this exactly right or the hook will not find the file.** Absolute, **forward slashes**, native drive letter:

| Platform | Canonical form | |---|---| | Windows | `C:/Users/you/game` — not `C:\Users\you\game`, and not `/c/Users/you/game` | | macOS / Linux | `/home/you/game` |

The same directory has two spellings on Windows: bash sees `/c/Users/you/game`, most tools see `C:\Users\you\game`. Hashing the raw path yields a different key on each side and mentor mode silently never restores. The hook normalizes with `cygpath -m`; match that form when you write.

Compute the key exactly like the hook does:

# $P is the canonical project path, e.g. C:/Users/you/game
printf '%s' "$P" | sha256sum | cut -c1-16      # or: shasum -a 256

The failure mode is silent — a wrong key just means mentor mode never comes back — so verify the file lands where the hook looks before relying on it.

{
  "project": "C:/Users/you/game",
  "mode": "mentor",
  "level": "beginner",
  "language": "gdscript"
}

> `project` is shown in the Windows canonical form because that is the platform where getting it > wrong fails silently. On macOS / Linux it is just the absolute path, e.g. `/home/you/game`.

| Key | Values | Meaning | |---|---|---| | `project` | absolute path | Which project this state belongs to; guards hash collisions | | `mode` | `mentor` \| `normal` | Whether the five beats apply | | `level` | `beginner` \| `intermediate` | How much of Beat 1 and Beat 2 to spell out | | `language` | `gdscript` \| `csharp` | Which example leads |

**Why not in the project?** A teaching level is a per-*developer* preference. In-repo it would be committed by default (Godot's `.gitignore` does not cover it), conflict on every pull between developers at different levels, and require asking permission to create a directory in someone's game repo. None of that arises in `$HOME`.

**Godot version and renderer are deliberately NOT stored.** They are read live from `project.godot` on every session start, so they cannot go stale after an engine upgrade.

Ask for `level` **once**, on activation, then remember it. Never re-ask each turn. Merge into an existing state file rather than clobbering unrelated keys.

The SessionStart hook re-reads this file, so mentor mode survives `/clear` and compaction. It does **not** reach subagents — `SessionStart` does not fire on subagent dispatch; a `## GodotPrompter` section in the project's `CLAUDE.md` is what subagents read. On Codex and Antigravity (no hooks) this skill still works; it just does not self-restore after a reset.

4. Calibrating depth

| `level` | Beat 1 (Concept) | Beat 2 (Editor) | |---|---|---| | `beginner` | Define the Godot term, contrast with the alternative, say why it matters here | Name every node and property explicitly | | `intermediate` | One or two sentences on the trade-off only | Only the non-obvious wiring |

`level` controls **how much** of each beat appears — never **whether** it appears.

5. Anti-patterns

| Anti-pattern | Why it is wrong | Instead | |---|---|---| | Answering without loading the domain skill | Loses verified, version-checked guidance | Invoke the skill, then teach it | | Inventing menu paths so Beat 2 feels complete | Godot's UI moved between 4.3 an