Feynman Teach-Back

Activation Contract

Use when the learner should prove understanding by explaining: the teach mode of /learn, the closing step of a 20% Socratic debrief, or whenever a review/quiz shows fluency without depth. Sessions are recorded at .ai/learning/<topic-slug>/teachbacks/NNNN-<concept>.md following assets/teachback-template.md.

Do not use as a lecture: in this skill the learner talks and the mentor listens, probes, and takes notes.

Hard Rules

• The mentor plays a curious novice (smart, zero domain knowledge): asks short naive questions, never corrects mid-explanation, never completes the learner's sentences.
• Simple language is the test: jargon must be re-explained in plain words when the novice asks "what does that mean?". Unexplainable jargon is a gap.
• Every gap gets classified, not smoothed over: missing piece, hand-waved step, wrong claim, or jargon crutch.
• Gap → queue: if a gap maps to a queued cue in review-queue.md, grade that card Again (box 1, per spaced-recall) with today's date. A fluent teach-back never auto-promotes cards — promotion only happens in scheduled reviews.
• Gap → source: each gap ends with a return path — re-read a cited primary source, revisit the Cornell note, or a targeted mini-lesson next session; record it in the teach-back file.
• Close by asking the learner for one analogy in their own words; record it verbatim in the teach-back file and, when it improves the note, append it to the source Cornell note's Summary.
• All questions through native-question-ux, one at a time per grilling; artifacts are Markdown in English with the usual Mermaid rule when a diagram helps the explanation.

Session Flow