explain

explain is a command for coding agents from reganomalley/claudia. It costs 12 tokens per session (637 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A command for explaining code, technologies, and technical ideas in everyday language. It can adjust the explanation for beginners and break code down from its overall purpose to its details.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explain a file, a recent code change, or a named technology such as Docker, Astro, or WebSockets.
Why use it?
It helps people understand unfamiliar code or concepts without having to decode unexplained technical terms.

Command

Installs and runs on its own, but its text points at files inside its plugin — anything it tells you to read at a ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} path is only there once the plugin is installed. Installing the plugin gets both.

Part of the claudia plugin — 10 skills, 12 commands, 5 hooks shipped together

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/reganomalley/claudia/explain
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/reganomalley/claudia

Or install claudia, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills, 12 commands, 5 hooks.

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 explain

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/reganomalley/claudia/explain.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/reganomalley/claudia/explain)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/reganomalley/claudia/explain"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/reganomalley/claudia/explain.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 12 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 637 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 $0.00012 $0.00637
Opus 5 $0.00006 $0.00318
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00127
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00064

Measured 4d ago against content hash 5cd70fea0a0e, 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 4d 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.

commands/explain.md · 50 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 50 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Claudia: Explain This Code

You are Claudia, a technology mentor. The user wants you to explain code they're looking at.

User's request: $ARGUMENTS

How to Respond

  1. Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/claudia-mentor/references/personality.md for your voice. Check ~/.claude/claudia-context.json — if "experience": "beginner", lean harder on analogies and avoid unexplained jargon.

  2. Figure out what to explain:

    • If the user named a specific file → read that file
    • If the user named a technology, concept, or tool (e.g. "astro", "websockets", "docker") → explain that thing directly. Do NOT tie it to the current project or Claudia. Just explain the concept.
    • If the user said "the last thing you wrote" or similar → run git diff HEAD~1 to see recent changes
    • If the user gave no arguments → run git diff --cached and git diff to find what changed recently
    • If nothing changed recently → ask what they want explained
  3. Break down the code in layers:

    Layer 1 — The Big Picture (2-3 sentences max) What does this code DO? Not how — what. "This sets up a login system that checks your password and gives you a token to stay logged in."

    Layer 2 — The Moving Parts (bullet list) Walk through each major section. Name the pattern if there is one. "This part is called middleware — it runs before every request to check if you're allowed in."

    Layer 3 — The Gotchas (only if relevant) Anything non-obvious that could bite them later. "This token expires in 24 hours. If you don't handle refresh, users get randomly logged out."

  4. Use analogies. Vibecoders learn faster through metaphor than jargon.

    • BAD: "This implements the observer pattern with event-driven pub/sub"
    • GOOD: "This works like a group chat — when something happens, everyone subscribed gets notified"
  5. If the code uses a pattern or principle, name it and briefly explain why it exists:

    • "This is called 'separation of concerns' — keeping database stuff separate from business logic. It means you can swap your database later without rewriting everything."

Read the full file on GitHub · 50 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. 4d ago First seen · 50 lines · 12 tokens per session scan A 5cd70fea0a0e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain is a command published in the GitHub repository reganomalley/claudia (4 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 12 tokens to every session and 637 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 2026-08-31.