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98 changes: 98 additions & 0 deletions docs/education/README.md
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<!-- START doctoc generated TOC please keep comment here to allow auto update -->
<!-- DON'T EDIT THIS SECTION, INSTEAD RE-RUN doctoc TO UPDATE -->
**Table of Contents** *generated with [DocToc](https://github.com/thlorenz/doctoc)*

- [Maintainer education stream](#maintainer-education-stream)
- [Who this is for](#who-this-is-for)
- [What the stream covers](#what-the-stream-covers)
- [Framework posture this stream teaches](#framework-posture-this-stream-teaches)
- [Relationship to other docs](#relationship-to-other-docs)
- [Placeholders and project-agnosticism](#placeholders-and-project-agnosticism)
- [Licence](#licence)

<!-- END doctoc generated TOC please keep comment here to allow auto update -->

<!-- SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0
https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 -->

# Maintainer education stream

Building an agentic project is a different craft from writing a service or a
CLI. Behaviour is **probabilistic, not deterministic**. Prompts and skill files
**are code** in every meaningful sense — they are diffed, reviewed, and
upstreamed like code. Evaluating an agent's output is **harder than testing a
function**. The unit of authorship shifts from "a function in a file" to "a
skill the agent invokes".

This stream exists because a platform no one knows how to use safely is not
adoptable, regardless of code quality (PRINCIPLE 18). Every Magpie release
ships the education material maintainers actually need for the skills that
release includes.

## Who this is for

- **Maintainers adopting Magpie** for the first time and wondering where to
start.
- **Maintainers who have adopted Magpie** and want to extend it with their own
skills or adapt existing ones for their project.
- **Contributors to the Magpie framework** who want to understand the mental
models behind the design choices.

If you are evaluating whether to adopt at all, start with
[MISSION.md](../../MISSION.md) and [PRINCIPLES.md](../../PRINCIPLES.md) first
— the education stream assumes you have already decided to engage.

## What the stream covers

| Page | What it teaches | Status |
|---|---|---|
| **This page** | What the stream is and how to navigate it | Stable |
| `pattern-catalogue.md` | Copy-pasteable skill / prompt / tool-use patterns with war stories | Planned |
| `your-first-skill.md` | Zero-to-merged path for landing a first working skill | Planned |
| [`eval-driven-development.md`](eval-driven-development.md) | How to think about correctness when "correct" is a distribution | Stable |
| `workshops.md` | Office-hours format, scheduling, recordings | Planned |

Pages marked **Planned** are scheduled in the implementation plan and will
land in upcoming releases. Each planned page will add its own row as a live
link when it arrives — the index stays link-clean before then.

## Framework posture this stream teaches

Every example in this stream inherits the framework's baseline posture — not
as a disclaimer, but as worked demonstration:

- **Data, not instructions** (PRINCIPLE 0) — external content (issue bodies,
PR comments, mail) is treated as data routed through the Privacy-LLM gate or
redacted before reaching a model. Skills never pass external text as
system-level instructions.
- **Privacy and sandbox by default** (PRINCIPLE 1) — agents run in a locked
sandbox; skills declare their tool permissions explicitly.
- **Eval as release discipline** (PRINCIPLE 8) — every skill ships an eval
suite; examples in this stream use the in-repo harness
(`tools/skill-evals/`) rather than an ad-hoc approach.

## Relationship to other docs

- **[magpie-write-skill](../../.claude/skills/magpie-write-skill/SKILL.md)**
is the authoring *reference* for someone who already knows the shape of a
skill. The `your-first-skill.md` page (planned) is the *beginner on-ramp*
that gets you to the point where the reference is useful.
- **[tools/privacy-llm/pii.md](../../tools/privacy-llm/pii.md)** is the PII
redaction reference catalogue. The pattern catalogue (planned) is a teaching
artefact — it shows *how* and *why*, not just *what*.
- **[docs/rfcs/RFC-AI-0004.md](../rfcs/RFC-AI-0004.md)** established the
principles this stream operationalises. The RFC's forward reference to the
"maintainer-education stream" resolves here via
[MISSION.md](../../MISSION.md).

## Placeholders and project-agnosticism

All examples use `<PROJECT>`, `<tracker>`, `<upstream>`, and
`<security-list>` placeholders (PRINCIPLE 12). A concrete adopter name in a
skill or a pattern is a refactor bug; swap your config, not the material.

## Licence

Content in `docs/education/` is Apache License 2.0 (PRINCIPLE 17).
AI-authored contributions carry a `Generated-by:` token in the commit message,
per ASF Generative Tooling Guidance.
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