LACY: Simulating Expert Mentoring for Software Onboarding with Code Tours

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Kara, Zeynep Begüm, İsmail, Aytekin, Ateş, Ece, Tamcı, İzgi Nur, İyigün, Zehra, Aslangül, Selin Şirin, Devran, Ömercan, Uçar, Baykal Mehmet, Tüzün, Eray
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Kara, Zeynep Begüm
İsmail, Aytekin
Ateş, Ece
Tamcı, İzgi Nur
İyigün, Zehra
Aslangül, Selin Şirin
Devran, Ömercan
Uçar, Baykal Mehmet
Tüzün, Eray
author_facet Kara, Zeynep Begüm
İsmail, Aytekin
Ateş, Ece
Tamcı, İzgi Nur
İyigün, Zehra
Aslangül, Selin Şirin
Devran, Ömercan
Uçar, Baykal Mehmet
Tüzün, Eray
contents Every software organization faces the onboarding challenge: helping newcomers navigate complex codebases, compensate for insufficient documentation, and comprehend code they did not author. Expert walkthroughs are among the most effective forms of support, yet they are expensive, repetitive, and do not scale. We present Lacy, a hybrid human-AI onboarding system that captures expert mentoring in reusable code tours-to our knowledge, the first hybrid approach combining AI-generated content with expert curation in code tours. Our design is grounded in requirements derived from 20+ meetings, surveys, and interviews across a year-long industry partnership with Beko. Supporting features include Voice-to-Tour capture, comprehension quizzes, podcasts, and a dashboard. We deployed Lacy on Beko's production environment and conducted a controlled study on a legacy finance system (30K+ LOC). Learners using expert-guided tours achieved 83% quiz scores versus 57% for AI-only tours, preferred tours over traditional self-study, and reported they would need fewer expert consultations. Experts found tour creation less burdensome than live walkthroughs. Beko has since adopted Lacy for organizational onboarding, and we release our code and study instruments as a replication package.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_25391
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle LACY: Simulating Expert Mentoring for Software Onboarding with Code Tours
Kara, Zeynep Begüm
İsmail, Aytekin
Ateş, Ece
Tamcı, İzgi Nur
İyigün, Zehra
Aslangül, Selin Şirin
Devran, Ömercan
Uçar, Baykal Mehmet
Tüzün, Eray
Software Engineering
Every software organization faces the onboarding challenge: helping newcomers navigate complex codebases, compensate for insufficient documentation, and comprehend code they did not author. Expert walkthroughs are among the most effective forms of support, yet they are expensive, repetitive, and do not scale. We present Lacy, a hybrid human-AI onboarding system that captures expert mentoring in reusable code tours-to our knowledge, the first hybrid approach combining AI-generated content with expert curation in code tours. Our design is grounded in requirements derived from 20+ meetings, surveys, and interviews across a year-long industry partnership with Beko. Supporting features include Voice-to-Tour capture, comprehension quizzes, podcasts, and a dashboard. We deployed Lacy on Beko's production environment and conducted a controlled study on a legacy finance system (30K+ LOC). Learners using expert-guided tours achieved 83% quiz scores versus 57% for AI-only tours, preferred tours over traditional self-study, and reported they would need fewer expert consultations. Experts found tour creation less burdensome than live walkthroughs. Beko has since adopted Lacy for organizational onboarding, and we release our code and study instruments as a replication package.
title LACY: Simulating Expert Mentoring for Software Onboarding with Code Tours
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.25391