Author
Describes the landscape
A staff engineer who knows the codebase writes a map: its regions, what is exemplary and what is legacy, the local rituals, the commands that check work, and a suggested course through it all.
Pre-release A Claude Code plugin
Learn a codebase by working in it.
Rolling Start is a codebase tutor that runs in Claude Code. The author describes the landscape, the learner picks the destination, the tutor points the way: one task at a time, with feedback on real work in your own working copy.
For experienced engineers getting up to speed in a codebase they had no hand in building.
Not a course. Nobody is graded; the learner says when a lesson is done.
Runs in Claude Code, beside whatever editor you already use.
01 — Roles
Three roles, one working copy.
The map says what is there. The profile says where you are going. Neither decides the route alone.
Learner
Picks the destination
Starts from the author's course and bends it: drops a region, adds one, changes a depth. One new hire needs billing and not scheduling; another wants all of it at working depth today.
Tutor
Points the way
Claude Code running the rolling plugin. It chooses the next lesson inside your destination, skips what your background covers, walks the code with you, and reviews what you write.
02 — The loop
Six commands. Your editor does the rest.
Work happens in your own editor, on a throwaway branch. The tutor reads the working copy straight off disk, uncommitted and unstaged. You never commit for it to see your work.
/rolling:start
Intake. Your background, the author's course, your changes to it.
/rolling:next
The next lesson inside your destination, never outside it.
/rolling:lesson
A walkthrough in the real code, then the offer of an exercise.
/rolling:task
Builds the exercise from the repo's history, proven solvable first.
/rolling:done
The repo's own checks run, then feedback that cites file and line.
/rolling:cancel
Stop without finishing. The branch and your work are kept.
03 — Modes
Two kinds of lesson, for two kinds of codebase.
The author chooses per lesson.
write Available
You write the change. The tutor reviews it.
For a repo with a long history of people writing the code. The tutor explains, points, and asks, but never writes inside the task's scope. A hook holds that line, not a promise in a prompt.
direct In design
You direct an agent. The tutor watches how it goes.
For a repo largely written by agents. Can you scope a request, steer over as many turns as it takes, and catch what a maintainer would bounce? You work in your own second session; the tutor reads the whole of it at the end.
04 — What holds
Rules held by hooks and scripts, in every permission mode.
- The verifier speaks first. The repo's own declared commands run before the tutor offers an opinion.
- Feedback is grounded. Every point carries a file, a line, a rule, and whether it is local convention or language norm.
- Nothing lands in your tree. Learner state lives in the plugin's data directory, outside the working copy.
- The tutor never orchestrates your environment. No containers started, no toolchains installed. It runs where you already run.
- Destructive steps ask. Anything that could lose your work prompts first, whatever the permission mode.
- The plugin knows no codebase. Everything specific to a repo lives in its map, which its author commits.
05 — Install
From the grid.
Add the marketplace, install the learner's plugin, and install the map for the codebase you are learning. The demo map teaches Rallly, in any Rallly clone. Then /clear, so the plugins set up in a fresh session.
/plugin marketplace add kurowski/rollingstart
/plugin install rolling@rollingstart
/plugin install rallly@rollingstart
/clear
/rolling:start
Rolling Start is pre-1.0 and built in public, mostly by AI agents with a human maintainer. Expect rough edges; file what you hit.