onboard

Engineer Onboarding

Run a guided onboarding flow that personalizes project guidance based on the engineer's background and their first task.

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Steps

1. Parse Arguments

Extract from user input:

• --quick: Skip skill assessment, assume mid-level generalist (optional)
• --task: Pre-specify first task to skip task question (optional)

2. Introduction

Briefly explain what will happen:

Welcome! I'll get you up to speed on this project in a few minutes.

Here's how this works:
1. A few questions about your background (so I don't over-explain things you know)
2. I'll analyze the project automatically
3. You'll get personalized guidance + a cheat sheet

Let's start.

3. Engineer Assessment (skip if --quick)

Ask these core questions using AskUserQuestion:

Question 1 - Primary Stack: "What's your primary language/framework and roughly how long have you been using it?"

Question 2 - Other Skills: "What other languages or frameworks are you comfortable with?"

Question 3 - New Territory: "Looking at this project, what feels completely new or unfamiliar to you?"

Adaptive Follow-ups (only ask if gaps detected):

After analyzing the answers, ask follow-ups ONLY for detected gaps:

• If the project uses frontend tech and engineer is backend-only: "Any experience with component-based UI frameworks (React, Vue, etc.)?"

• If the project uses backend tech and engineer is frontend-only: "Have you worked with ORMs, REST APIs, or database design?"

• If the project has tests and engineer didn't mention testing: "How comfortable are you with writing tests / TDD?"

• If the project uses TypeScript and engineer only mentioned JavaScript: "How's your TypeScript experience — types, generics, strict mode?"

Maximum 2 follow-up questions. Keep the assessment fast.

4. Project Analysis (automatic)

Analyze the project silently. Do NOT ask the engineer anything here.

4a. Detect Project Type:

# Frontend
[ -f "package.json" ] && grep -q '"next"' package.json && echo "nextjs"
[ -f "package.json" ] && grep -q '"nuxt"' package.json && echo "nuxtjs"
[ -f "package.json" ] && grep -q "@tanstack/react-router" package.json && echo "tanstack-router"
[ -f "package.json" ] && grep -q '"hono"' package.json && echo "hono"

# Backend
[ -f "manage.py" ] && echo "django"
[ -f "package.json" ] && grep -q "@nestjs/core" package.json && echo "nestjs"

# Mobile
[ -f "pubspec.yaml" ] && echo "flutter"

# Auth
[ -f "package.json" ] && grep -q '"better-auth"' package.json && echo "better-auth"