Tutorials

The tutorial ladder

Twelve rungs, dependency-ordered: each one builds a runnable mod, ends with a checkpoint you can verify in-game, and leans on the rungs before it. Start at 01 even if you only want the later material — the early rungs establish the manifest, validate, and enable/disable loop everything else assumes. Task-sized lookups live in the cookbook.

Rung	Page	You build	New ground
01	Sprite and text tweak	a recolor + one dialogue line	asset transforms, text:override
02	Balance patch	move/stat/party rebalance behind a toggle	patch, merge rules, mod.options
03	New species	a catchable dex entry	pokemon:register, icons, cries
04	New item and ball	a mart item + a custom ball	items, balls, mart shelves
05	New move	a move with a custom effect	moves, move_effects, the ctx facade
06	NPC and dialogue	a branching conversation	map objects, map_scripts talk entries
07	New map	a connected route with encounters	maps, connections, encounters
08	Quest	a multi-map fetch quest	script rows, flags, mod.save, migrations
09	Custom music	file songs + an authored chiptune	music, map_songs, ChipAsm, music.select
10	New mechanic	a status, a type, a difficulty hook	statuses, type_chart, battle.damage
11	Custom UI screen	a quest log screen	screens, ui.* hooks, mod.ui
12	Mini total conversion	the previous rungs as one shippable mod	field.boot, profiles, packaging

Every rung ends the same way: disable the mod and confirm the game is vanilla again. That is the parity invariant, and it is the platform's core promise (Lifecycle).