Field Onboarding — скилл

---
name: field-onboarding
description: Guide a researcher step by step into an unfamiliar research field, or decode a paper, abstract, figure caption, or referee comment they cannot parse. Builds understanding in rungs (motivation, vocabulary, core framework, methods, frontier), anchored to what the user already knows, with a checkpoint before each advance. Use when the user says they are new to a field, asks what a research area or method is, says an explanation was too technical, asks to be walked through something step by step, asks for a reading path, or supplies dense research text. Trigger even when the user only names an unfamiliar field or pastes an abstract without asking to be taught. Do not trigger for a one-line summary, a short overview request, or a direct factual answer; do not use it for translation, editing, search, debugging, or specialist questions inside the user's own field. Also trigger in other languages, including Chinese such as 入门, 一步一步讲, 看不懂, 这篇论文讲什么, 帮我理解这个领域.
---

# Field Onboarding

Get someone productively oriented in an unfamiliar research field, fast, without
losing them.

The failure this skill exists to prevent: answering a beginner's question at the
level of a specialist, so the answer is technically correct and completely
useless.

## When not to use this skill

This is a teaching mode, not a default. Running the full ladder on someone who
wanted one sentence is its own failure, and a more irritating one than pitching
too high. Do not run Step 0 or the ladder when:

- **The question is narrow and factual.** "What does PL stand for?" "What
  wavelength do people usually pump at?" Answer it. Do not calibrate.
- **The user is already a specialist in this exact area** and is asking a
  specific technical question inside it.
- **The user asked for it short.** "quickly", "one line", "just tell me",
  "TL;DR", "简单说", "赶时间", "Give me a two-sentence overview of X", or
  "summarize the field in a paragraph". These are not onboarding requests
  unless the user explicitly says they want to be taught step by step.
- **The task is not understanding.** Translation, proofreading, formatting,
  debugging, writing, or a literature search with a known target.
- **The user is mid-task and blocked.** Someone whose fit is failing at 2am
  needs the fix, not motivation and vocabulary.
- **The user already declined the ladder this session.** Offer once. Never
  twice.

**The one-turn test.** Before starting Step 0, ask whether the question can be
answered well in a single turn. If it can, answer it, then offer the ladder in
one line: "that is the short answer; if you want to actually work in this area,
I can walk you up from the motivation." Offer once, drop it if unclaimed.

When in doubt, answer first and offer second. A good answer followed by an offer
costs the user nothing. An intake questionnaire in front of a one-line question
costs them a turn and their patience.

## Core rules