engineering-tutor

Teach engineering concepts for real understanding using the Feynman technique, strong metaphors, and diagrams (render via beautiful-mermaid). Use when users ask to explain/teach/break down engineering concepts, build intuition/mental models, understand trade-offs/failure modes/design choices, or want a visual diagram.

5 stars

Best use case

engineering-tutor is best used when you need a repeatable AI agent workflow instead of a one-off prompt.

Teach engineering concepts for real understanding using the Feynman technique, strong metaphors, and diagrams (render via beautiful-mermaid). Use when users ask to explain/teach/break down engineering concepts, build intuition/mental models, understand trade-offs/failure modes/design choices, or want a visual diagram.

Teams using engineering-tutor should expect a more consistent output, faster repeated execution, less prompt rewriting.

When to use this skill

  • You want a reusable workflow that can be run more than once with consistent structure.

When not to use this skill

  • You only need a quick one-off answer and do not need a reusable workflow.
  • You cannot install or maintain the underlying files, dependencies, or repository context.

Installation

Claude Code / Cursor / Codex

$curl -o ~/.claude/skills/engineering-tutor/SKILL.md --create-dirs "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/marchatton/agent-skills/main/.agents/skills/00-utilities/engineering-tutor/SKILL.md"

Manual Installation

  1. Download SKILL.md from GitHub
  2. Place it in .claude/skills/engineering-tutor/SKILL.md inside your project
  3. Restart your AI agent — it will auto-discover the skill

How engineering-tutor Compares

Feature / Agentengineering-tutorStandard Approach
Platform SupportNot specifiedLimited / Varies
Context Awareness High Baseline
Installation ComplexityUnknownN/A

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this skill do?

Teach engineering concepts for real understanding using the Feynman technique, strong metaphors, and diagrams (render via beautiful-mermaid). Use when users ask to explain/teach/break down engineering concepts, build intuition/mental models, understand trade-offs/failure modes/design choices, or want a visual diagram.

Where can I find the source code?

You can find the source code on GitHub using the link provided at the top of the page.

SKILL.md Source

# Engineering Tutor

## Protocol
1) Quick context check (max 2 Qs)
- Ask domain/goal + level.
- If no answer, state assumptions in 1 line, proceed.

2) Intuition first (plain English)
- Explain like curious 12-year-old.
- Short sentences. Minimal jargon.
- If jargon needed: define immediately.

3) Metaphor / analogy
- Pick everyday physical metaphor.
- Map parts explicitly.
- Say where metaphor breaks + why.

4) Visual (diagram)
- If flow/structure/lifecycle/interaction exists: include diagram; render via `beautiful-mermaid`.
- Keep small/readable; label nodes.
- Introduce diagram, render (ASCII/Unicode default), then explain. Include code only if needed.
- Choose type: flowchart / sequenceDiagram / stateDiagram / block.

5) Step-by-step breakdown
- Add one layer at a time.
- Mark what is new vs already known.
- Use tiny examples when helpful.
- Call constraints/trade-offs/failure modes as you go.

6) Common misunderstandings
- List likely confusions, silent assumptions, edge cases.

7) Teach-back loop
- Ask user to explain back.
- Identify weak spots; re-explain only those.
- Use a different metaphor on retry.

8) Save learnings to `docs/96-engineering-tutor-learnings/` (create if missing; see `docs/REPO-STRUCTURE.md`)

## Engineering mindset
Include at least one: inputs/outputs, constraints, trade-offs, failure modes, why this design vs alternatives.

## Simplifications
If you simplify: say what you ignore, why ok now, what changes in full version.

## Output format (default)
1. Intuition first (plain English)
2. Metaphor / analogy (mapping)
3. Visual explanation (diagram via `beautiful-mermaid`)
4. Step-by-step breakdown
5. Common misunderstandings
6. Check understanding (teach-back question)

## If user says "just the answer"
Give short direct answer + 1-line intuition; offer optional diagram.

Related Skills

skill-creator

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Create new skills, modify and improve existing skills, and measure skill performance. Use when users want to create a skill from scratch, update or optimize an existing skill, run evals to test a skill, benchmark skill performance with variance analysis, or optimize a skill's description for better triggering accuracy.

modular-skills-architect

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Map and refactor an agent context ecosystem: skills, commands/workflows, hooks, agent files, AGENTS.md templates, and docs. Output system map, module/dependency design, Register updates, and a concrete split/consolidate/rename/delete plan. Use when routing or ownership is messy.

heal-skill

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

This skill should be used when fixing incorrect SKILL.md files with outdated instructions or APIs.

create-agent-skills

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Expert guidance for creating, writing, and refining Claude Code Skills. Use when working with SKILL.md files, authoring new skills, improving existing skills, or understanding skill structure and best practices.

agent-native-audit

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Comprehensive agent-native architecture audit with scored principles and multi-slice review. Use for system-wide health checks or periodic audits.

write-judge-prompt

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Design LLM-as-Judge evaluators for subjective criteria that code-based checks cannot handle. Use when a failure mode requires interpretation (tone, faithfulness, relevance, completeness). Do NOT use when the failure mode can be checked with code (regex, schema validation, execution tests). Do NOT use when you need to validate or calibrate the judge — use validate-evaluator instead.

validate-evaluator

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Calibrate an LLM judge against human labels using data splits, TPR/TNR, and bias correction. Use after writing a judge prompt (write-judge-prompt) when you need to verify alignment before trusting its outputs. Do NOT use for code-based evaluators (those are deterministic; test with standard unit tests).

generate-synthetic-data

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Create diverse synthetic test inputs for LLM pipeline evaluation using dimension-based tuple generation. Use when bootstrapping an eval dataset, when real user data is sparse, or when stress-testing specific failure hypotheses. Do NOT use when you already have 100+ representative real traces (use stratified sampling instead), or when the task is collecting production logs.

evaluate-rag

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Guides evaluation of RAG pipeline retrieval and generation quality. Use when evaluating a retrieval-augmented generation system, measuring retrieval quality, assessing generation faithfulness or relevance, generating synthetic QA pairs for retrieval testing, or optimizing chunking strategies.

eval-audit

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Audit an LLM eval pipeline and surface problems: missing error analysis, unvalidated judges, vanity metrics, etc. Use when inheriting an eval system, when unsure whether evals are trustworthy, or as a starting point when no eval infrastructure exists. Do NOT use when the goal is to build a new evaluator from scratch (use error-analysis, write-judge-prompt, or validate-evaluator instead).

error-analysis

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Help the user systematically identify and categorize failure modes in an LLM pipeline by reading traces. Use when starting a new eval project, after significant pipeline changes (new features, model switches, prompt rewrites), when production metrics drop, or after incidents.

build-review-interface

5
from marchatton/agent-skills

Build a custom browser-based annotation interface tailored to your data for reviewing LLM traces and collecting structured feedback. Use when you need to build an annotation tool, review traces, or collect human labels.