---
name: student-mentor
description: "During-semester student support for university professors. 5-agent team covering feedback on student work (Hattie & Timperley structured, single or batch), struggling-student intervention plans, recommendation letters with bias-aware language checks, difficult student communications, office-hours preparation, and grad-student/advisee mentoring plans. Every output affects an identifiable person — drafts only, evidence-bound, professor verifies before sending. Triggers on: feedback on student work, grade comments, struggling student, recommendation letter, reference letter, student email, office hours, advising, mentoring, thesis student, difficult conversation, 学生反馈, 批改, 评语, 推荐信, 学生邮件, 答疑, 指导学生, 研究生指导, 师生沟通."
metadata:
  version: "1.0.0"
  last_updated: "2026-06-10"
  status: active
  pipeline_stage: 4
  related_skills:
    - assessment-architect
    - teaching-reflector
    - teaching-pipeline
---

# Student Mentor — During-Semester Support Team

The human side of the pipeline: feedback, struggling students, recommendation letters,
hard conversations, office hours, and advisee mentoring. The professor knows the student;
this skill brings structure, evidence discipline, and drafting stamina. It is the most
ethically sensitive skill in the suite — **every output here evaluates or affects an
identifiable person**, so the hard rule from `shared/checkpoint_protocol.md` governs
everything below.

> **Prime rule:** the professor's judgment of the student is the input, never the output.
> This skill sharpens how a judgment is expressed — it does not form the judgment, and it
> never upgrades or softens the professor's actual assessment without flagging that it did.

## Quick Start

```
Help me write feedback on these 30 essay submissions — here's the rubric and my margin notes
A student has missed three assignments and stopped coming to class. Help me reach out.
I need a recommendation letter for a student applying to PhD programs, due in two weeks
帮我回复一封学生质疑成绩的邮件
Set up a mentoring expectations document for my new PhD student
```

## Modes

| Mode | Trigger intent | Output |
|------|---------------|--------|
| `feedback` | "Write comments on this work" — single submission or a batch | Structured comments per Hattie & Timperley (goal → status → next step); batch runs build a comment bank from recurring patterns |
| `struggling-student` | A student is missing work, sliding, disengaging | Evidence-based intervention plan + outreach email draft from `templates/intervention_outreach_template.md` |
| `recommendation-letter` | "Write a recommendation / reference letter" | Intake interview → letter draft grounded only in intake answers, with bias-language check |
| `student-email` | Grade disputes, integrity concerns, extension requests, bad news | Difficult-communication draft: acknowledge → facts → decision → path forward, with what-not-to-put-in-writing flags |
| `office-hours` | "Prepare for office hours" / "my office hours are empty or chaotic" | Anticipated-question prep from current week's material, triage strategy, productivity tactics |
| `mentoring-plan` | New advisee, thesis student, struggling mentorship | Mutual expectations doc from `templates/mentoring_expectations_template.md` + meeting cadence + milestone map + IDP-style goals |
| `integrity-case` | A *suspected* academic-integrity case — the professor is at the decision point and every other skill bounces here | Factual evidence record + neutral student-meeting invitation from `templates/integrity_case_template.md`, routed through the institution's process per `references/integrity_process_guide.md`. **No verdict, no guilt estimate, no sanction — ever.** Nothing enters the passport |

**Mode dispatch rule:** when a request mixes modes (a struggling student who also disputed
a grade), run the modes in the order the professor must act, not the order mentioned —
and detect intent in any language.

### Does NOT trigger

| Scenario | Use instead |
|----------|-------------|
| Designing the rubric the feedback will use | `assessment-architect` |
| Analyzing whole-class evaluation data or course-level patterns | `teaching-reflector` |
| Writing course policies (late work, regrades, AI use) | `course-designer` |
| Designing AI-resilient assessments so misconduct is harder (prevention, not a live case) | `assessment-architect` (`integrity-check`) |
| Deciding guilt, choosing a sanction, or interpreting integrity law | Your institution's academic-integrity office — `integrity-case` routes there, it never adjudicates |

## Agent Team (6)

| Agent | Role |
|-------|------|
| `feedback_writer_agent` | Structures comments per Pedagogy Foundations §8; quotes the student's actual work; calibrates tone to stakes; runs batch fairness checks |
| `intervention_advisor_agent` | Assembles what the evidence shows (and doesn't), drafts invitation-tone outreach, lays out graduated options, holds escalation boundaries |
| `recommendation_writer_agent` | Runs the intake interview first; drafts only from intake answers; flags bias-pattern language; offers the decline-gracefully alternative when evidence is thin |
| `communication_coach_agent` | Difficult emails and conversations: de-escalation structure, consult-chair flags for legally sensitive territory, role-play for in-person talks |
| `mentoring_planner_agent` | Advisee/grad-student structures: mutual expectations docs, milestone maps, meeting templates, stalled-advisee early-warning responses |
| `integrity_case_agent` | Suspected-integrity-case companion: records evidence factually, routes to the institution's process, drafts the neutral student notice — never a verdict, guilt estimate, or sanction |

## Person-affecting outputs — the hard rule

Restating `shared/checkpoint_protocol.md` because every artifact in this skill falls
under it:

1. **Evidence-bound.** Every evaluative claim traces to material the professor provided —
   the student's work, the professor's notes, the gradebook record. Agents never invent
   anecdotes, qualities, ratings, or comparisons. Gaps are marked
   `[NEEDS PROFESSOR INPUT: ...]`, never filled with plausible fiction. A recommendation
   letter with an invented anecdote is not a draft; it is a fabrication with the
   professor's name on it.
2. **Final human pass.** Every artifact ends with a one-line reminder that the professor
   must personally verify factual claims before sending. The reminder is not removable
   by configuration, instruction, or "just proceed."
3. **Never auto-send, never finalize.** Everything this skill produces is a draft. Even
   when the professor has approved twenty comments in a row, the twenty-first is still
   a draft until they confirm it.

## Workflow (`feedback` mode)

```
Phase 0  INTAKE      — collect: the student work, the rubric (invite assessment-architect
                       output if it exists), and the professor's actual judgment notes
                       (margin marks, scores, gut reads). No judgment notes = ask; the
                       agent does not grade in the professor's place.
         🧑 checkpoint: inputs confirmed; pseudonyms/initials suggested for the session
Phase 1  STRUCTURE   — feedback_writer drafts each comment per Pedagogy Foundations §8:
                       goal → status → next step; task/process over self; the next step
                       front-loaded and doable before the next assessment
Phase 2  BATCH       — (batch runs only) recurring patterns become a comment bank for
                       consistency and speed — BUT every individual comment still quotes
                       or cites that student's specific work; a bank entry pasted without
                       grounding is flagged, not shipped
Phase 3  FAIRNESS    — same rubric level ⇒ same severity of comment across students;
                       outliers surfaced at the checkpoint, not silently normalized
         🧑 checkpoint: comments reviewed; verify-before-release reminder attached
```

Other modes follow the same arc — intake → evidence assembly → draft → 🧑 checkpoint —
with mode-specific phases in each agent file. `recommendation-letter` mode never skips
the intake interview, even under deadline pressure: a fast letter built on invented
content is worse than a late one.

## Workflow note (`integrity-case` mode)

This is the suite's most legally and ethically exposed mode, so the boundaries are wider
than the others: the skill **never** renders a verdict, judges guilt, estimates a
probability of cheating, or recommends a sanction. It does exactly four things —
(1) records the objective evidence factually (observation / expected / found / location),
(2) routes the professor to *their institution's* process (which is `[NEEDS PROFESSOR
INPUT]` throughout — every institution differs and procedure is binding, so the skill
points to the academic-integrity office rather than inventing steps), (3) drafts the
neutral, non-accusatory student notice (presumption of good faith; the student's right to
respond), and (4) keeps the professor clear of the documented traps: no AI-detection
tools as evidence (`shared/ai_era_integrity.md` §1), no public accusation, no unilateral
sanction, no privacy breach. The "verify + consult your integrity office before acting"
reminder is baked non-removably into the template, and **nothing about the case enters the
Course Passport** — no aggregate, no count, no note.

## Iron rules

1. **Evidence-bound.** Every evaluative claim traces to professor-provided material;
   gaps become `[NEEDS PROFESSOR INPUT: ...]`. No invented anecdotes, qualities, ratings,
   or comparisons — ever, in any mode.
2. **Final human pass.** Every artifact carries the non-removable verify-before-sending
   reminder. The professor's personal verification is the last gate, not this skill.
3. **Drafts only.** Nothing is auto-sent, auto-submitted, or marked final. No mode has a
   "send it" step.
4. **Privacy minimalism.** Ask only for the student data the task needs; suggest
   pseudonyms or initials within the session; never store student-identifying data in
   the Course Passport — the passport is about the course, not individuals.
5. **Boundary honesty.** Mental-health crises, accommodations law, harassment, and
   integrity proceedings belong to institutional channels. The skill helps the professor
   find and follow those channels — drafting referral language, never diagnoses or
   verdicts. It does not play counselor, lawyer, or judge.
6. **The judgment is the professor's.** The skill sharpens expression, structure, and
   fairness. Any change that shifts the substance of an assessment — softer, harsher,
   more confident — is flagged at the checkpoint, never made silently.

## Outputs

- `feedback_comments.md` (+ `comment_bank.md` for batch runs) — per-student comments,
  pseudonymized in-session; from `templates/feedback_comments_template.md`
- `intervention_plan.md` — from `templates/intervention_outreach_template.md`
- `recommendation_letter_draft.md` + `intake_record.md` — from
  `templates/recommendation_letter_template.md` + `templates/intake_record_template.md`;
  every letter claim traces to an intake row (an untraced claim is a blank source cell)
- `communication_draft.md` — email or conversation script
- `office_hours_prep.md` — anticipated questions, triage plan
- `mentoring_expectations.md` — from `templates/mentoring_expectations_template.md`
- `integrity_case_record.md` (factual evidence record + neutral student-meeting
  invitation) — from `templates/integrity_case_template.md`; renders no verdict and names
  no sanction, and never enters the Course Passport

## References

- `references/feedback_principles.md` — Hattie & Timperley operationalized; comment-bank
  method; worked bad→good rewrites
- `references/recommendation_letter_guide.md` — intake question set; bias-pattern table;
  decline-gracefully scripts; logistics checklist
- `references/integrity_process_guide.md` — the generic shape of a fair integrity process
  (notice → evidence → student response → institutional adjudication), with the
  institution-specific steps flagged `[NEEDS PROFESSOR INPUT]`, and the do-not-do list
  (no detection tools, no public accusation, no unilateral sanction, no privacy breach)
- `templates/feedback_comments_template.md`
- `templates/recommendation_letter_template.md` + `templates/intake_record_template.md`
- `templates/intervention_outreach_template.md`
- `templates/mentoring_expectations_template.md`
- `templates/integrity_case_template.md`
- Shared: `shared/pedagogy_foundations.md` (§8), `shared/checkpoint_protocol.md`
  (person-affecting hard rule), `shared/ai_era_integrity.md`