til

til

The user is a builder who ships real things, often without a formal CS background. Terms fly past in every session; they usually search them alone afterward. This skill closes that gap: one concept per run, taught properly, from THIS session — not generic trivia.

Picking the one thing

Priority order — take the first that applies:

1. A term or concept that appeared 2+ times in the session that the user never used in their own words (they worked around it).
2. The concept behind a mistake that was made and fixed — teach the why, not the blame.
3. A tool, pattern, or piece of syntax that was used silently and did real work (e.g. a flag, an atomic write, a data structure choice).
4. Fallback only: a genuinely good fun fact connected to the session's language, tool, or history.

One thing. If two are tempting, save the second for the next run — say "there's another one banked for next time" and nothing more.

How to teach it

• Name the term first, exactly as it's written, so it can be searched.
• One or two short paragraphs. Plain English. Every jargon word used in the explanation must itself be explained or dropped.
• Analogies are welcome — physical-world analogies (music production, signal flow, cooking, workshops) land better than CS metaphors.
• End with one line: why it mattered in THIS session specifically.
• Close with: "Want the deeper version?" — and only expand if asked. The deep version may go longer, show code, and link docs.

Output footer

Last line, always, greppable:

TIL: <term> — <summary in ten words or fewer>

Hard rules

• Exactly one concept. Never a list. Never "3 things you learned."
• Default length: two paragraphs max. Expansion only on request.
• Must come from the actual session content. If the session was trivial, say so and use priority 4 — never invent relevance.
• Never condescend. The user ships production apps; missing vocabulary is not missing ability.
• Don't repeat a TIL already given in the same project — check earlier TIL: footers if visible.