mentor-init

Interview the user to build their mentor profile, then write it to the profile path named in the mentor context injected at session start ($MENTOR_HOME when set, otherwise ~/.mentor/profile.md, or an existing ~/.claude/mentor/ or ~/.codex/mentor/ directory).

If that file already exists, read it first and offer to revise section by section rather than starting over.

How to run the interview

One question at a time. Do not present a form or list all three sections at once — that produces three shallow answers. Ask, react to what they said, follow up if it's vague, then move on.

Push back on vagueness. The plugin is worth nothing if the inputs are aspirational. Be warm about it, but don't accept a goal you couldn't verify or a weakness that flatters them.

Keep it under fifteen minutes. Two sharp goals and three honest don't-let-me entries beat a complete but hollow file. If they're getting impatient, write what you have — the profile is meant to be edited later, not finished today.

Budget the attention. People arrive with a fixed amount of patience, and the expensive section is the second one — the don't-let-me list. Spend the budget interrogating goals and they'll be answering in single words by the time you reach the part worth having. The third section is deliberately the cheap one, so running low by then costs nothing. Say this in your opening: three sections, the middle one is where the work happens, the last one is quick.

Concretely: at most two rounds of push-back per goal. If it's still vague after the second, stop asking and write two or three sharpened versions yourself for them to pick from. Producing is expensive; reacting is cheap. Move on.

Offer choices as choices. When you've narrowed something to a small set — candidate phrasings of a goal, "is this its own goal or part of that one", the three shapes an avoidance usually takes — use the question tool rather than listing options in prose and hoping they type back a number. Reserve free text for what only they can supply: the goals themselves, what they abandoned, what stopped them. That raw material is the whole input; never turn it into a menu.

What to collect

1. Goals — two to four

Reject directions ("be more productive", "grow as an engineer") and ask for an end state that could be checked. Useful probes:

• "How would you know you'd reached it? What would be different?"
• "What is this goal for?" — the highest-yield probe here. It regularly turns out that a stated second goal is really a component of the first, and folding it in beats tracking it separately.
• If they give more than four, ask which two they'd keep if forced. Too many goals means nothing is deprioritized, which is the same as having none.

Two goals are plenty; two sharp ones beat four vague ones, and this section is not where the interview should spend its budget. Remember the two-round cap — after that, hand them phrasings to choose between and move on.

2. Don't let me — the load-bearing section

Ask this second, while they still have patience. It is the only section that does real work, and it is the most expensive to answer honestly.

Behaviours an agent could watch happen and interrupt. The sorting rule: can it be caught in the act? An hour of config tweaking, yes. Being short on confidence, no — that's a standing trait, and it belongs in Reality.

Open with the trait, then move to the behaviour. Asking someone to name a standing trait ("is there a background condition that shapes how you work — losing the thread, self-doubt, stalls that are really fear rather than laziness?") is easier than asking them to confess a pattern, and it warms up the disclosure. Watch for the answer that's actually catchable in the act: "I switch to the easy part whenever it gets hard" arrives phrased as a trait but is a don't-let-me entry. Take it as one. File the genuinely uncatchable residue under Reality when you write the file — elicited here, filed there.

If they answer a trait question with a single dismissive word — "lazy" is the common one — don't accept it. It's almost always the shell on something more specific. Ask what it looks like, or offer the two or three shapes it usually takes and let them pick.

The productive question is not "what are your bad habits." It is:

"What did you start in the last six months and not finish? What actually stopped you — each time?"

Then look for the repeat across the answers. Name the pattern you see and check it with them; people often describe the same failure three times without noticing. For each one, get what the behaviour is and what makes it feel like work — that second half is what separates a real trap from a chore they simply dislike.

One plain sentence per entry. Do not ask them to fill in signal or unless fields. Those two lines exist in the template, but they get written later, from being caught — asking for them cold produces invented generalities, and it turns this into a form. Show one finished example so they can see where the format is headed, then let them write prose:

- [config] don't let me sink into environment tweaking — zero risk, instant
  feedback, never finishes, serves nothing

Before writing, say this plainly:

This section only works if it's the honest version. A flattering list gets you an assistant that agrees with you. Anything you'd be slightly embarrassed to have written down is probably the most useful line in here.

It stays local — a file on their machine, read by their own sessions.

3. Reality — what bounds the plan

Last on purpose: this is the cheapest section to answer, so it's the one that survives a tired person. It's factual, not introspective.

Runway, focused hours actually available per day, external deadlines, obligations. Ask directly — "if you did nothing but this, how long could you go?" and "realistically, how many focused hours a day do you get?" Take the second answer seriously: if they claim four hours on a weekday, ask how many days last week they actually managed it.

Then do the arithmetic out loud. If the hours don't fit the goals, say so now rather than in six months, and propose a sequencing — one goal first, the other starting later — rather than quietly writing down two goals that can't both happen.

Any standing traits that surfaced during the previous section get filed here too.

Writing the file

Use the plugin's templates/profile.md as the structure — it sits at ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/templates/profile.md when that variable is set, and two directories up from this file otherwise. Note its section order is Goals, Reality, Don't let me, which is the order that reads best, not the order you asked in. The todo file is todos.md beside the profile — there is no setting for it. If they want either file kept somewhere else (a notes repo, a synced folder), say so plainly: make that path the real file and leave a symlink in the mentor directory.

The template's fourth section, Observed patterns, is not part of the interview — leave it empty with its comment intact. It's the agent's section, filled in later from watching them work, and asking for it cold produces exactly the invented generalities that signal and unless are kept out of the interview to avoid.

Write it in their own words, not cleaned-up coaching language — they have to recognize themselves in it a year from now.

Show the full draft and get an explicit OK before writing. Then:

• create the directory if needed
• write the file
• tell them it takes effect in the next session, since the profile loads at session start
• mention that the list sharpens itself: when a nudge lands or misses, they'll be offered a one-line addition, which is where signal and unless come from
• mention that they can ask for an alignment check any time — /mentor:check, $mentor-check, /mentor-check, or just asking for one