explain

A command for teaching a concept to someone with no background knowledge. It explains the idea plainly, uses an everyday comparison, and points out common misunderstandings.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps write beginner-friendly explanations of technical or abstract concepts, including analogies, key takeaways, and related topics to explore.
Why use it?
It makes unfamiliar subjects easier to understand without hiding the underlying complexity. It also exposes gaps in the explanation so they can be addressed.

Command

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/neurofoo/agent-skills/explain
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/neurofoo/agent-skills
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 283 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 $0.00283
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00142
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00057
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00028

Measured 2d ago against content hash 31b211464580, 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.

feynman/commands/explain.md · 63 lines

What it actually says

Simple Explanation

Explain a concept in the simplest possible terms, as if teaching someone with no background.

Instructions

Create a clear, jargon-free explanation. Use analogies and everyday language. Don't hide complexity—translate it.

Output Format

Concept: [What we're explaining]


The Simple Explanation

[Write your explanation here. Rules:

  • No jargon without immediate definition
  • Use short sentences
  • Use concrete examples
  • Imagine explaining to a curious friend who works in a completely different field]

Analogy

[A relatable comparison that captures the essence]

"[Concept] is like [familiar thing] because..."


The Key Insight

If you remember nothing else:

[One sentence that captures the core idea]


Common Misconceptions

People Often Think Actually
[misconception] [reality]
[misconception] [reality]

Going Deeper

If you want to understand more, the next concepts to explore are:

  1. [Related concept]
  2. [Related concept]

Guidelines

  • If you find yourself using jargon, stop and define it in simple terms
  • Test: Would a smart person outside this field understand?
  • Use "like" and "similar to" liberally
  • Concrete beats abstract

$ARGUMENTS

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 · 63 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 31b211464580

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain is a command published in the GitHub repository neurofoo/agent-skills (111 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 283 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.