onboarding-guide

Onboarding Guide

Produces a personalized onboarding path for a new developer by combining team health signals, codebase structure, and sprint state into a structured week-by-week plan with concrete first tasks.

Quick Start

Invoke this skill when someone new is joining the team. Typical outputs:

• Team health snapshot (sprint state, velocity, blockers)
• Recommended first tasks (ranked by learning value + risk + impact)
• Key systems overview (what to learn in what order)
• Team patterns (branching, review, testing, communication)
• Structured weekly plan (orientation → first contribution → independence)
• People to connect with (who owns what)

First Strategy: Use wicked-* Ecosystem

• Delivery reports: /wicked-garden:delivery:report for team health overview
• Memory: wicked-garden:mem:recall for team conventions and past decisions
• Search: wicked-garden:search for codebase navigation (backed by the codebase-narrator skill for architectural overview)
• Tasks: Inspect native tasks via TaskCreate/TaskUpdate with metadata={event_type, chain_id, source_agent, phase}

Process

1. Gather Team Context

From delivery reports (if CSV/export available):

/wicked-garden:delivery:report {data_file}

From native tasks: Read session tasks under ${CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR}/tasks/{session_id}/ — filter by metadata.event_type=="task" for human-visible items.

From memory:

/wicked-garden:mem:recall "team conventions"
/wicked-garden:mem:recall "architecture decisions"
/wicked-garden:mem:recall "onboarding"

From codebase:

/wicked-garden:search:docs README
/wicked-garden:search:code "TODO|FIXME|HACK"

2. Assess Team Health

• Sprint status: in flight, blocked, done
• Velocity: tasks/week, points/sprint
• Blockers: what's stuck and why
• Team capacity: who's working on what

Present as a concise snapshot, not a data dump.

3. Identify Good First Tasks

Rank candidates by:

1. Learning value — introduces key systems
2. Risk — low-risk preferred (isolated blast radius)
3. Team impact — helpful contributions preferred
4. Independence — minimal coordination needed

Sources: unassigned low-priority items, documentation gaps, small bugs, test coverage gaps.

4. Map Key Systems

Create a systems overview:

• Core services — what the project does
• Architecture — high-level component map
• Data flow — how data moves through the system
• Deployment — how code ships to production
• Dependencies — external services and integrations

Hand off to the codebase-narrator skill for the full architectural walk.

5. Explain Team Patterns

Document:

• Branching strategy (trunk-based, git-flow, etc.)
• Review process (PR template, required reviewers, merge criteria)
• Testing approach (what tests are expected per change)
• Communication (where decisions happen — Slack, meetings, docs)
• On-call / support (how incidents are handled)

6. Build the Week-by-Week Plan

See refs/plan-template.md for the full structure.

Shape:

• Week 1 — Orientation: read docs, set up env, meet people, pick first task
• Week 2 — First Contribution: complete first task with pair programming, submit first PR, attend sprint ceremonies
• Week 3 — Independence: take a medium-complexity task, review someone else's PR, identify an improvement, share feedback

Quality Standards

Good onboarding plans have:

• Concrete first tasks — not "explore the codebase" but specific tickets
• Context before code — team health and patterns before diving in
• Graduated complexity — easy → medium → harder
• Human connections — who to talk to about what
• Feedback loop — check-in points to adjust the plan

Common Pitfalls

• Information overload on day one
• Assuming knowledge of team-specific tools
• Skipping team culture and patterns
• Starting with the hardest problem
• No check-in points to course-correct

See Also

• refs/plan-template.md — full output template
• skills/search/codebase-narrator — architectural walk-through
• /wicked-garden:delivery:report — team health input