What problem does it solve? When learners face unfamiliar libraries, APIs, or complex problem spaces, they often either freeze or ship messy prototype code as production code. This Skill provides a disciplined teaching protocol for exploratory coding: build a quick throwaway prototype to learn, extract the lessons, then deliberately rebuild or refactor before shipping. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Structured Spike Cycle: Enforces a Spike → Evaluate → Decide → Rebuild/Refactor workflow with time-boxing, a written spike question, and explicit lesson extraction. - Proficiency-Adaptive Coaching: Adjusts mentor behavior across Novice, Familiar, Competent, and Proficient levels, with progression signals recorded in the learner's progress file. - Anti-Pattern Guardrails: Stops common mistakes like writing tests during a spike, refactoring prematurely, or shipping spike code. - Use Case: A learner needs to integrate an unfamiliar authentication library. The mentor time-boxes a 30-minute spike to answer "how does auth work in this framework?", captures lessons learned, then switches to TDD to build the clean implementation. ## Quick Start Ask the mentor to use the spike-then-refactor method to explore how an unfamiliar library or API works before building the real implementation.
