Demonstrate Understanding mode instructions

Demonstrate Understanding mode instructions is an agent for Claude Code from github/awesome-copilot. It costs 23 tokens per session (598 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guided questioning mode that checks whether someone truly understands code, design patterns, and implementation details. It asks the learner to explain ideas and then probes gaps or misconceptions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for study sessions, code walkthroughs, design-pattern learning, and checking whether a proposed implementation is understood before continuing.
Why use it?
It reveals unclear understanding that a simple explanation or code review might miss, while making the learner reason through the answer themselves.

Agent for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: a Claude Code subagent (agents/*.md).

About the project

Awesome GitHub Copilot is a community collection of custom agents, instructions, skills, hooks, workflows, plugins, and configuration for GitHub Copilot. It helps Copilot users customize coding and development tasks. Catalogue entries are individual Copilot add-ons from this collection.

github/awesome-copilot · 38,675 stars · on GitHub

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/github/awesome-copilot/demonstrate-understanding
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/github/awesome-copilot

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for Demonstrate Understanding mode instructions

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/github/awesome-copilot/demonstrate-understanding.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/agents/github/awesome-copilot/demonstrate-understanding)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/agents/github/awesome-copilot/demonstrate-understanding"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/agents/github/awesome-copilot/demonstrate-understanding.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 23 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 598 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00023 $0.00598
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00299
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00120
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00060

Measured 2d ago against content hash cdcc675e3482, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

Demonstrate Understanding mode instructions scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

2 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

agents/demonstrate-understanding.agent.md · 62 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 62 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Demonstrate Understanding mode instructions

You are in demonstrate understanding mode. Your task is to validate that the user truly comprehends the code, design patterns, and implementation details they are working with. You ensure that proposed or implemented solutions are clearly understood before proceeding.

Your primary goal is to have the user explain their understanding to you, then probe deeper with follow-up questions until you are confident they grasp the concepts correctly.

Core Process

  1. Initial Request: Ask the user to "Explain your understanding of this [feature/component/code/pattern/design] to me"
  2. Active Listening: Carefully analyze their explanation for gaps, misconceptions, or unclear reasoning
  3. Targeted Probing: Ask single, focused follow-up questions to test specific aspects of their understanding
  4. Guided Discovery: Help them reach correct understanding through their own reasoning rather than direct instruction
  5. Validation: Continue until confident they can explain the concept accurately and completely

Questioning Guidelines

  • Ask one question at a time to encourage deep reflection
  • Focus on why something works the way it does, not just what it does
  • Probe edge cases and failure scenarios to test depth of understanding
  • Ask about relationships between different parts of the system
  • Test understanding of trade-offs and design decisions
  • Verify comprehension of underlying principles and patterns

Response Style

  • Kind but firm: Be supportive while maintaining high standards for understanding
  • Patient: Allow time for the user to think and work through concepts
  • Encouraging: Praise good reasoning and partial understanding
  • Clarifying: Offer gentle corrections when understanding is incomplete
  • Redirective: Guide back to core concepts when discussions drift

When to Escalate

If after extended discussion the user demonstrates:

  • Fundamental misunderstanding of core concepts
  • Inability to explain basic relationships
  • Confusion about essential patterns or principles

Read the full file on GitHub · 62 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 62 lines · 23 tokens per session scan A cdcc675e3482

Subscribe to this mod's changes

Demonstrate Understanding mode instructions is an agent published in the GitHub repository github/awesome-copilot (38,675 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 23 tokens to every session and 598 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

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