ALTER — a personal-university learning framework for Claude Code

📦 Claude Code plugin · install with /plugin marketplace add dmserrano/alter-learning then /plugin install alter@alter-learning · Install details

ALTER turns any topic into a self-directed learning pathway, captured as Markdown in a topic folder. It's a set of Claude Code skills that coordinate five academic roles:

• Advisor — interviews you and writes the plan (module sequence + milestones)
• Librarian — gathers ranked, vetted sources per module
• Tutor — teaches and drills, tracks progress and a spaced-review queue
• Editor — critiques the deliverables you produce
• Roommate — cross-domain provocations and perspective

Plus a helper skill, flashcards — a spaced-repetition drill over the review sheets the Tutor writes.

alter is the entry point and dashboard: it reads a topic's state, regenerates the "you are here" map, and dispatches the right role next.

Status

All skills are implemented and packaged as a single Claude Code plugin (alter): alter (coordinator), advisor (planning), librarian (source-gathering), tutor (teaching + practice), editor (feedback), roommate (cross-domain perspective), and the flashcards drill helper.

Install

ALTER ships as a Claude Code plugin. Add its marketplace and install it:

/plugin marketplace add dmserrano/alter-learning
/plugin install alter@alter-learning

That installs all seven skills under the alter plugin. You mostly won't call them by hand — tell Claude what you want ("teach myself Rust ownership", "quiz me on module 3") and it routes to the right role. To drive one explicitly, plugin skills are namespaced /alter:<skill>: /alter:alter (the dashboard), and /alter:advisor · /alter:librarian · /alter:tutor · /alter:editor · /alter:roommate · /alter:flashcards.

Run ALTER from the directory you want your learning to live in, then /alter:alter (or just "start learning X") to begin or resume a pathway.

The oral-defense step in the Editor leans on a separate interview-drill skill when present; if you don't have it installed, the Editor runs the defense inline instead.

Local development

To hack on the skills, load the repo directly — no install, picks up edits on /reload-plugins:

git clone https://github.com/dmserrano/alter-learning.git
claude --plugin-dir ./alter-learning

How it works

Run the ALTER skills from the directory you want your learning to live in (e.g. a dedicated university/ folder). Each topic is created as a <topic-slug>/ folder in that current working directory:

<topic-slug>/
  plan.md          # advisor: destination, baseline, module sequence, milestones
  reading-list.md  # generated index of the per-module reading lists (regenerated, like README)
  progress.md      # tutor: dated session log + review queue
  modules/
    NN-<name>/     # everything for one module
      reading-list.md # librarian: ranked vetted sources for this module (source of truth)
      tutorial.md  # tutor: step-by-step build (technical modules)
      guide.md     # tutor: review sheet + flashcards (drilled by /flashcards)
      exercises/   # tutor: scaffolded work you build in
      milestone/   # YOUR deliverable — the work that proves mastery
      review.md    # editor: critique of your milestone
  README.md        # "you are here" map, regenerated by alter

Each module is tagged with one of four track types — technical, conceptual, language, practical — which switch how the Librarian, Tutor, and milestone behave. See skills/alter/reference/conventions.md for the full contract.

The topic's README.md doubles as the dashboard: a module checklist plus a Due for review line showing what's ready to drill. alter regenerates it, and the Tutor/Editor refresh it in place as modules complete, so it stays current between runs.

Additional skills

Beyond the five roles, ALTER ships a drill helper:

• flashcards — a spaced-repetition drill over the review sheets the Tutor writes. Each module's guide.md can carry a ## Flashcards block of Q:/A: pairs; flashcards quizzes them one at a time, grades your answer, and reschedules each card (Leitner boxes, stamped as a <!-- box N · due YYYY-MM-DD --> comment on the card). By default it drills only what's due.

/alter:flashcards                 # drill everything due across all modules
/alter:flashcards drill module 3  # drill one module's cards, due or not
/alter:flashcards everything      # cram: every card, ignore due dates

During a drill, speak hint, skip, show, again, score, or stop — it's built for dictation, one card per turn.

Credits

The five-role ALTER framework (Advisor, Librarian, Tutor, Editor, Roommate) is inspired by the "Harvard in a Box" video by Sandeep Swadia. This repository is an independent implementation of that idea as Claude Code skills — the code and prose here are original.

License

MIT © 2026 Dominic Serrano