Asking to take control of their screen via Zoom is something I would recommend, and leaving it on - that way, you can say "here, let me show you" and immediately start clicking and typing.

Obviously don't do this without asking and getting approval first, the same way you wouldn't just shove someone's hands off a keyboard and mouse, but this helps quite a bit with the "no, two lines up" nonsense.

Zoom also has a way to draw lines on screen - very helpful.

> Based on the previous interactions, I can tell he doesn't understand what he's actually doing, just blindly following instructions.

This part is, uh, not technologically solveable.

I think taking over the keyboard would make it worse in this case. My goal is to help him find the information himself. This hasn't been successful. He might ask "How do I start a dev server?" My response would be "Can you check the read me?" That isn't enough. I literally tell him stuff like "Okay, switch to the tab with the readme file. See where it says 'Start development server'? Keep scrolling down. Keep going. Okay. Copy the line below and paste it into your terminal." It's bad.