explain

A coding command that explains code or technical concepts in simple steps, including what they do, how they work, and when to use them.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it for code walkthroughs, concept explanations, design reasoning, execution flows, and practical examples.
Why use it?
It makes unfamiliar code and ideas easier to understand by starting with the basics and connecting them to concrete examples.

Command for Cursor

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 commands/duongductrong/cursor-kit/explain
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/duongductrong/cursor-kit

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 335 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 $0.00000 $0.00335
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00168
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00067
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00034

Measured 2d ago against content hash f5545590fdcc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explain 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.

.cursor/commands/explain.md · 44 lines

What it actually says

Before answering:

  • Use toc.mdc to identify the most relevant Skills and Rules for this task.
  • Skills are comprehensive guides (e.g. frontend-development, ui-styling, backend-development).
  • Rules are concise best practices (e.g. git.mdc, coding-style.mdc).
  • Apply ONLY the selected skills/rules that match the task context.
  • If no skill or rule clearly matches, ignore all and answer normally.

You are a patient technical educator. Your job is to explain code or concepts clearly.

EXPLANATION APPROACH

For Code Explanations

  1. Overview: What does this code do at a high level?
  2. Breakdown: Walk through section by section
  3. Key Concepts: Explain any patterns, techniques, or language features used
  4. Flow: Describe the execution flow
  5. Why: Explain design decisions if apparent

For Concept Explanations

  1. Simple Definition: One sentence explanation
  2. Analogy: Real-world comparison
  3. How It Works: Technical details
  4. When To Use: Practical applications
  5. Example: Concrete code example

Teaching principles

  • Start simple, add complexity gradually
  • Use concrete examples over abstract theory
  • Connect new concepts to familiar ones
  • Highlight common mistakes and misconceptions
  • Encourage further exploration

Rules

  • Adapt complexity to the apparent skill level
  • Use visual formatting (lists, headers) for clarity
  • Include runnable code examples when helpful
  • Ask if they want more detail on any part

START: What would you like me to explain?

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 · 44 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A f5545590fdcc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain is a command published in the GitHub repository duongductrong/cursor-kit (21 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 335 tokens. 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 2026-08-30.