From soft-skills
Provides frameworks like Crawl-Walk-Run progression, Socratic questioning, and trust-building for mentoring developers. Use for 1:1 meetings, pair programming, onboarding juniors, and teaching concepts.
npx claudepluginhub melodic-software/claude-code-plugins --plugin soft-skillsThis skill is limited to using the following tools:
This skill provides frameworks for effective mentoring, knowledge transfer, and developing other engineers.
Guides junior developers and AI newcomers with Socratic questioning to build reasoning and autonomy, never providing direct answers. Activates on learning/debug triggers or /mentoring-juniors.
Narrates decisions, tradeoffs, and reasoning in plain language during code building to teach users via real-time explanations. Activates on 'teach me', 'mentor mode', etc.
Offers interactive learning exercises after new files, schema changes, refactors, or design decisions to build expertise in AI-assisted coding.
Share bugs, ideas, or general feedback.
This skill provides frameworks for effective mentoring, knowledge transfer, and developing other engineers.
A framework for teaching new skills progressively:
| Phase | Mentor Role | Mentee Role | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crawl | Do, they observe | Watch and ask questions | Until they understand the "what" |
| Walk | Guide heavily | They try, you correct | Until they can do it with help |
| Run | Provide guardrails | They lead, you advise | Ongoing with decreasing support |
Crawl: You review PRs together, thinking aloud about what you look for, why things matter, what makes good/bad code.
Walk: They do the review, you watch. You ask questions: "What about this section?" You course-correct in real-time.
Run: They review independently. You spot-check occasionally and discuss any disagreements. They come to you with edge cases.
Key principle: Stay in each phase long enough. Rushing to "Run" creates gaps.
Instead of giving answers, ask questions that lead to understanding:
| Instead of... | Ask... |
|---|---|
| "Use a hash map here" | "What data structure would give us O(1) lookups?" |
| "You need to handle null" | "What happens if this value is null?" |
| "That's inefficient" | "What's the time complexity here? Could we do better?" |
| "Don't do it that way" | "What are the trade-offs of this approach?" |
When NOT to use Socratic questioning:
Trust is the foundation of effective mentoring:
Show genuine interest in their goals
Create psychological safety
Maintain confidentiality
Be consistent and reliable
Acknowledge when they teach you
People learn differently. Adapt your approach:
| Style | Signs | Approach |
|---|---|---|
| Visual | Asks for diagrams, draws things out | Use whiteboarding, architecture diagrams, code walkthroughs |
| Auditory | Learns from discussion, podcasts | Talk through concepts, think-aloud, verbal explanations |
| Kinesthetic | Prefers hands-on practice | Pair programming, experiments, building things |
| Reading/Writing | Prefers documentation | Point to docs, have them write summaries |
Most people are a mix. Start with all approaches, then observe what clicks.
Pair programming is a powerful mentoring tool when done well. See references/pair-programming-guide.md for detailed guidance.
Effective 1:1s are the backbone of mentoring. See references/one-on-one-structure.md for detailed templates.
❌ Grabbing the keyboard when they struggle ✅ Ask guiding questions, let them try
❌ "You know what a REST API is, right?" ✅ "What's your experience with REST APIs?"
❌ Explaining everything about microservices at once ✅ Focus on what they need now, save rest for later
❌ Only discussing technical work ✅ Check in on how they're doing personally
❌ "I'll just fix this, it's faster" ✅ "Let's fix this together so you see how"
Track mentee development over time:
references/pair-programming-guide.md - Communication during pairingreferences/one-on-one-structure.md - 1:1 meeting frameworks/soft-skills:write-1on1-agenda command - Generate 1:1 agendasfeedback-conversations skill - Giving developmental feedbackprofessional-communication skill - General communication patternsDate: 2025-12-26 Model: claude-opus-4-5-20251101