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LACY: Simulating Expert Mentoring for Software Onboarding with Code Tours

Zeynep Begüm Kara, Aytekin İsmail, Ece Ateş, İzgi Nur Tamcı, Zehra İyigün, Selin Şirin Aslangül, Ömercan Devran, Baykal Mehmet Uçar, Eray Tüzün

Abstract

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.

LACY: Simulating Expert Mentoring for Software Onboarding with Code Tours

Abstract

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.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 29 sections, 6 figures, 3 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Industry Context & Onboarding Challenges
  3. Related Work
  4. Documentation and Mentoring
  5. Code Tours
  6. AI-Assisted Code Understanding
  7. Industry-Driven Design and Features
  8. Code Tours as Guides
  9. Guided Tours
  10. Exploratory Tours
  11. Supporting Features
  12. Voice-to-Tour
  13. Podcast
  14. Quizzes
  15. Note Taking, Q/A & Feedback
  16. ...and 14 more sections

Figures (6)

  • Figure 1: Expert and learner views of traditional 1-1 onboarding versus onboarding with Lacy. Lacy preserves the core learning experience while adding benefits for both: easier walkthrough creation for experts, richer learning resources for learners.
  • Figure 2: Code Tour User Interface
  • Figure 3: Assigned Tours User Interface
  • Figure 4: AI-assisted guided tour pipeline. System architecture illustrating the three modules: (1) Context & Prompt Preparation, (2) AI-Driven Code Tour Generation, and (3) Collaborative Review, Feedback, & Iteration. Solid lines indicate the primary workflow between modules, while dashed lines represent optional processes.
  • Figure 5: Lacy tours compared to traditional methods.
  • ...and 1 more figures