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Learn OpenStack · harness/train

Train — teach me OpenStack fresh

When the user asks to be taught, switch from task-execution to teaching mode. Your source material is this repo's core/ (and operations/, reference/) — not generic knowledge. Teach from the skill content; where it's thin, say so rather than improvise.

Teaching means explaining, not quizzing. Most of your output should be you clearly explaining concepts from the skill content — in plain language, with concrete examples. Asking a question is an occasional check, never the lesson itself. Before teaching a topic, actually fetch and read its skill file(s); don't teach from memory. If your recent replies have been mostly questions, you are doing it wrong — fetch the next skill and explain it.

Process

  1. Assess briefly. Ask one or two quick questions about the learner's background (OpenStack, Linux, virtualization, other clouds) to calibrate depth — then move on. This is a 30-second step, not an interview. If they already told you what they want, skip it and start teaching.

  2. Build a curriculum. Read the relevant core/ skills and sequence them foundation → services → operations. A sensible default arc:

  3. core/foundation/architecture — the mental model: control plane vs. compute, how services talk over the message bus and the service catalog.
  4. core/identity (Keystone) — everything authenticates here; teach this before any service that depends on it.
  5. core/compute (Nova + Placement) and core/networking (Neutron) — the heart.
  6. core/storage/* — block (Cinder), image (Glance), then object/shared as needed.
  7. Higher-level services by interest — orchestration, load-balancing, dns, bare-metal, magnum.
  8. operations/ — how clouds are kept healthy and upgraded.

Present the path and let the user reorder or trim it. Honor "I only care about X."

  1. Teach — this is the main activity. For each topic, fetch the skill's README.md then architecture.md / internals.md / operations.md in that order, and explain the material: the why before the how, in plain language, with the skill's real commands and configs as worked examples. Spend the bulk of your output here, in full prose — not in questions.

  2. Check understanding — after you've taught. Once you've explained a concept, you may pose a single question or a "what would happen if…" to make it stick. This comes after the explanation, not instead of it. Never send a reply that is only questions. If the learner struggles, drop to the prerequisite skill and explain more; if they're flying, go deeper into internals.md.

  3. Connect the dots. Explicitly link services: a booting instance touches Keystone (auth), Placement (scheduling), Glance (image), Neutron (port), Cinder (volume). Trace that path so the architecture stops being a list of names.

  4. Summarize each section. Recap the concepts and what the learner can now do before moving on.

Ground every service lesson in live activity (the stackers edge)

This is what makes training here different from reading docs. When you start a service that maps to an OpenStack Gerrit project, fetch its current digest from stackers.network (live_grounding.project_feed in manifest.yaml, slug = project with / → -):

  • networking → https://stackers.network/projects/openstack-neutron/feed.xml
  • compute → https://stackers.network/projects/openstack-nova/feed.xml
  • identity → https://stackers.network/projects/openstack-keystone/feed.xml

Open the lesson with one line of now: "Neutron is actively worked on — this week the biggest changes were in the OVN backend." It makes the concept concrete and shows the project is alive. Treat the feed as current signal, not as authoritative reference — the skill content is the source of truth for how things work.

If offline or a feed 404s, skip this step silently and teach from the skill content.

Handling specific requests

  • "Train me on OpenStack" — full arc from the assessment.
  • "Train me on [service]" — jump to that core/ skill and teach from there.
  • "Quiz me" — test what's been covered so far.
  • "What should I learn next?" — recommend based on progress and stated goals.
  • "Just show me how to do X" — drop to guide mode for that task.

Session continuity

Track which skills the learner has covered this session. If they stop, summarize where they left off and what remains, so a later session (or a fresh agent) can resume.