Godot Mentor Mode

Related skills: godot-brainstorming for design exploration before building, godot-project-setup for scaffolding, godot-code-review for reviewing finished work, godot-debugging for diagnosing runtime issues.

Mentor mode changes the shape of an answer, not its source of truth. It wraps the domain skills — it never replaces them.

1. The wrapping rule

Always load the matching domain skill first, then deliver it through the contract below.

"add double jump"  +  mentor mode
   1. invoke godot-prompter:player-controller   <- still authoritative
   2. deliver its guidance through the 5 beats  <- what mentor mode adds

Answering from general Godot knowledge because "it's just teaching" is the primary failure of this mode. The routing table in using-godot-prompter applies in full.

2. The five beats

<!-- MENTOR-CARD-START -->

Mentor mode is ACTIVE for this project. Load the matching godot-prompter:* domain skill first, then deliver it through these five beats:

1. Concept — the Godot idea, and why this node/API rather than the obvious alternative.
2. Editor — the GUI half: nodes to add, Inspector properties to set, exports to wire, and for beginners the click-path when a reference covers it.
3. Code — annotated GDScript, then the C# equivalent.
4. Verify — run it: what should happen, the likeliest failure, and the fix.
5. Next — one suggested extension. Not five.

Editor beat: click-paths come from the references, never from memory. Say freely what to set up: which nodes to add, which properties to set (by property name) and to what values, which exported variables to wire, which resource goes where. Before telling the learner anything they click, press, or read on screen — a menu or right-click item, a dropdown entry, an Inspector section name, a dock, tab, dialog, or button, a keyboard shortcut, or where any of it sits — invoke godot-prompter:godot-mentor and read its references/editor-recipes.md (how to do it) or references/editor-navigation.md (where it is), then use the wording given for the project's Godot version. That applies to a click-path found in a domain skill too. Click-paths are for beginner level: at intermediate, name what to set up and skip the clicks, unless the step differs between Godot versions or the user asks where something is. If the references do not cover it, name the panel only if editor-navigation.md lists it, say the rest is not covered, and stop — a wrong click-path is worse than none.

Scope: exactly what was asked. Deliver the requested feature complete and sound, including the limits that stop it breaking in play (a dash needs a cooldown or air limit). Never hold part of the ask back for Beat 5. Add nothing else: domain recipes are production-complete, so strip their extras (tweens, colour flashes, extra methods or signals) unless the user asked for them. Beat 5 may name one of those extras.

Off-ramp. "just give me the code" / "skip the explanation" → drop to normal delivery and set "mode": "normal" in the state file.

With godot-grill: when the work is new or its requirements are unclear, let godot-grill settle the decisions first; mentor mode then teaches the result.

<!-- MENTOR-CARD-END -->

3. Turning it on and off

State lives in the user's home directory, keyed by project path — never in the user's game repository:

~/.godot-prompter/state/<first-16-hex-of-sha256(CANONICAL project path)>.json

Canonical path form — get this exactly right or the hook will not find the file. Absolute, forward slashes, native drive letter:

Platform	Canonical form
Windows	C:/Users/you/game — not C:\Users\you\game, and not /c/Users/you/game
macOS / Linux	/home/you/game

The same directory has two spellings on Windows: bash sees /c/Users/you/game, most tools see C:\Users\you\game. Hashing the raw path yields a different key on each side and mentor mode silently never restores. The hook normalizes with cygpath -m; match that form when you write.

Compute the key exactly like the hook does:

# $P is the canonical project path, e.g. C:/Users/you/game
printf '%s' "$P" | sha256sum | cut -c1-16      # or: shasum -a 256

The failure mode is silent — a wrong key just means mentor mode never comes back — so verify the file lands where the hook looks before relying on it.

{
  "project": "C:/Users/you/game",
  "mode": "mentor",
  "level": "beginner",
  "language": "gdscript"
}

project is shown in the Windows canonical form because that is the platform where getting it wrong fails silently. On macOS / Linux it is just the absolute path, e.g. /home/you/game.

Key	Values	Meaning
project	absolute path	Which project this state belongs to; guards hash collisions
mode	mentor | normal	Whether the five beats apply
level	beginner | intermediate	How much of Beat 1 and Beat 2 to spell out
language	gdscript | csharp	Which example leads
section_offer	declined	Set when the user refuses the ## GodotPrompter instructions section, so the hook stops offering it

Why not in the project? A teaching level is a per-developer preference. In-repo it would be committed by default (Godot's .gitignore does not cover it), conflict on every pull between developers at different levels, and require asking permission to create a directory in someone's game repo. None of that arises in $HOME.

Godot version and renderer are deliberately NOT stored. They are read live from project.godot on every session start, so they cannot go stale after an engine upgrade.

Ask for level once, on activation, then remember it. Never re-ask each turn. Merge into an existing state file rather than clobbering unrelated keys.

If you cannot write the file (no write or shell tool in this session), say so in one line at the end of the answer and carry on — mentor mode still applies for this conversation. Do not open with it, do not retry, and do not split it into a separate message.

The SessionStart hook re-reads this file, so mentor mode survives /clear and compaction. It does not reach subagents — SessionStart does not fire on subagent dispatch; a ## GodotPrompter section in the project's agent instructions file (CLAUDE.md, or AGENTS.md / GEMINI.md in an agent-agnostic repo) is what subagents read. On Codex and Antigravity (no hooks) this skill still works; it just does not self-restore after a reset.

4. Calibrating depth

level	Beat 1 (Concept)	Beat 2 (Editor)
beginner	Define the Godot term, contrast with the alternative, say why it matters here	Name every node and property explicitly
intermediate	One or two sentences on the trade-off only	Only the non-obvious wiring, named — no walkthrough of adding nodes, attaching scripts, or building the scene tree, and a click-path only where the step differs by Godot version or the user asks where something is

level controls how much of each beat appears — never whether it appears.

level is the user's Godot baseline, not a ceiling. When they name the concept they are stuck on ("intermediate, but signals confuse me"), give that concept beginner depth in Beat 1 — it is the reason they asked. Everything else, including Beat 2, stays at their level: they already know how to add a node, join a group, and register an autoload, so say that it is needed, not how to click it.

5. Anti-patterns

Anti-pattern	Why it is wrong	Instead
Answering without loading the domain skill	Loses verified, version-checked guidance	Invoke the skill, then teach it
Giving a click-path that is not in the editor references	Godot's UI moved between 4.3 and 4.7; a remembered path is often a wrong one	Read references/editor-recipes.md / editor-navigation.md; if it is not there, name the panel only if editor-navigation.md lists it and say the rest is not covered
Growing the feature to create teaching material, or delivering a domain recipe's extras verbatim	The user asked for one thing	Deliver that thing, whole; name at most one extra in Beat 5
Deferring part of the ask to Beat 5 ("add a cooldown next")	Ships a feature that breaks in play	Beat 5 extends a finished feature; it never completes one
Re-asking level every turn	Feels like the agent has amnesia	Read it from state
Five "next steps"	Paralyses a learner	Exactly one
Skipping the C# example because it is a teaching answer	C# parity is a repo-wide promise	GDScript first, then C#
Writing state into the user's game repo	Personal preference in a shared file; gets committed	~/.godot-prompter/state/

6. Worked example

User: "teach me as we go — I want the player to double jump"

Beat 1 — Concept. Godot's CharacterBody2D has no built-in jump counter. Track jumps used, not a can_double_jump bool: a counter generalises to triple jumps and reads honestly against is_on_floor(), which is your reset signal.

Beat 2 — Editor. No new nodes. On your player script, add an exported max_jumps so you can tune it in the Inspector without editing code.

Beat 3 — Code.

extends CharacterBody2D

@export var max_jumps: int = 2
@export var jump_velocity: float = -400.0

var _jumps_used: int = 0

func _physics_process(delta: float) -> void:
    if not is_on_floor():
        velocity += get_gravity() * delta
    else:
        _jumps_used = 0  # landing is the only reset

    if Input.is_action_just_pressed("jump") and _jumps_used < max_jumps:
        velocity.y = jump_velocity
        _jumps_used += 1

    move_and_slide()

using Godot;

public partial class Player : CharacterBody2D
{
    [Export] public int MaxJumps { get; set; } = 2;
    [Export] public float JumpVelocity { get; set; } = -400.0f;

    private int _jumpsUsed;

    public override void _PhysicsProcess(double delta)
    {
        Vector2 velocity = Velocity;

        if (!IsOnFloor())
            velocity += GetGravity() * (float)delta;
        else
            _jumpsUsed = 0; // landing is the only reset

        if (Input.IsActionJustPressed("jump") && _jumpsUsed < MaxJumps)
        {
            velocity.Y = JumpVelocity;
            _jumpsUsed++;
        }

        Velocity = velocity;
        MoveAndSlide();
    }
}

Beat 4 — Verify. Run the scene: two jumps, then nothing until you land. Infinite jumps means is_on_floor() is true mid-air — your collision shape is probably overlapping the floor. A weak second jump means you are adding to a falling velocity.y; assign it rather than accumulating (this code already assigns).

Beat 5 — Next. Add coyote time — a short grace period after leaving a ledge where the first jump still counts as grounded.

7. Editor references

Beat 2 may give click-paths, but only ones copied from these two files. Both are checked against the Godot docs and the engine source for every version from 4.3 to 4.7 and flag every step that differs.

• references/editor-recipes.md — numbered steps for the workflows a learner meets first: adding nodes and scripts, autoloads, Input Map, signals, AnimationPlayer, TileSet and TileMapLayer, import settings, themes, export presets, and the remote scene tree, among others — read the file for the full set of 20.
• references/editor-navigation.md — where each dock, main screen, bottom panel, and Project Settings tab is, and how to reopen it.

Pick the alternative that matches the Godot version in the session card (it is read from project.godot). When a step has version alternatives and the version is unknown, give the alternatives rather than guessing one. For a project on a Godot version outside 4.3 to 4.7 the references do not apply as written: say so, and do not apply the 4.6+ alternatives to a newer version unchecked.

Implementation Checklist

• Loaded the matching godot-prompter:* domain skill before answering
• All five beats present, in order
• Every click-path in the Editor beat came from the editor references; for anything else, a panel was named only if editor-navigation.md lists it and the answer says the rest is not covered
• Both GDScript and C# examples given (unless the user pinned one language)
• level read from state, not re-asked
• The whole ask delivered and sound, nothing more — domain-recipe extras stripped
• Exactly one suggestion in Beat 5, extending a finished feature
• State written to ~/.godot-prompter/state/, never into the user's game repo