ask-short-answer-first

ask-short-answer-first is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from alivirgo/Major-AI-Skills. It costs 24 tokens per session (1,043 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A prompting guide for BLUF, meaning “Bottom Line Up Front,” a way to put the direct answer before supporting detail. It is intended for situations where the reader needs the result quickly.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to request concise answers first, followed by optional facts, reasoning, or deeper explanation.
Why use it?
It reduces time spent searching through introductions and background before finding the answer or diagnosis.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions Codex.

Part of the mas-common-sense-pack plugin — 5 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to request concise answers first, followed by optional facts, reasoning, or deeper explanation.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-short-answer-first
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.

Any agent
npx skills add alivirgo/Major-AI-Skills --skill ask-short-answer-first
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alivirgo/Major-AI-Skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install mas-common-sense-pack, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 5 skills.

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 ask-short-answer-first

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-short-answer-first/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-short-answer-first)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-short-answer-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-short-answer-first/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for ask-short-answer-first

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-short-answer-first"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alivirgo/major-ai-skills/ask-short-answer-first.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 24 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,043 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00024 $0.01043
Opus 5 $0.00012 $0.00522
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00209
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00104

Measured today against content hash 4596676ecea4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ask-short-answer-first 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 today.

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.

plugins/mas-common-sense-pack/skills/ask-short-answer-first/SKILL.md · 109 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 109 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ask for Short Answer First (The BLUF Protocol) (AI Skill)

Overview

Default AI outputs follow an academic narrative structure: preamble $\rightarrow$ historical context $\rightarrow$ analysis $\rightarrow$ conclusion. When you need a fast answer during a meeting or while debugging a live incident, digging through 4 paragraphs to find a single line is frustrating and inefficient.

The BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) Protocol forces the AI into an inverted-pyramid format: deliver the conclusive answer in the first 2 sentences, followed by an optional, structured breakdown.


The Inverted Pyramid Response Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                 The BLUF Output Structure                   │
│                                                             │
│  [ LEVEL 1: BLUF (Lines 1-2) ]  ──► Direct verdict / answer │
│                  │                                          │
│  [ LEVEL 2: Quick Bullet Facts] ──► 3 core supporting facts │
│                  │                                          │
│  [ LEVEL 3: Deep Dive (Optional)──► Full context / code     │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Master BLUF Prompt Templates

Pattern 1: The Strict 2-Line BLUF Directive

Use for quick facts, terminal commands, or Slack lookups:

Answer this question: [INSERT QUESTION]

Formatting:
1. **Line 1 (The BLUF)**: Give the exact, direct answer or solution in bold. No greetings or preambles.
2. **Line 2**: State the primary reason or key caveat.
3. If I need a deeper explanation, I will ask for it.

Pattern 2: The Two-Tiered Executive Brief

Use for technical architecture, business proposals, or policy questions:

Analyze [SCENARIO / PROBLEM].

Structure your reply in two distinct sections:
### 1. Executive BLUF (Max 50 words)
State the final recommendation, estimated cost/time, and primary trade-off.

### 2. Supporting Breakdown
- 3 key bullet points explaining why this is the best path.
- 1 code snippet or implementation step if applicable.

Read the full file on GitHub · 109 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. today Changed · -12 tokens per session 4596676ecea4
  2. 11d ago First seen · 109 lines · 36 tokens per session scan A a84c7aab5e03

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ask-short-answer-first is a skill published in the GitHub repository alivirgo/Major-AI-Skills (1 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 24 tokens to every session and 1,043 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.

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