explain

A concise explanation step for making the current working result understandable at the reader's level while preserving its claims and caveats.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when you ask for an explanation of a current result, proposal, or clearly named subject.
Why use it?
It clarifies the smallest confusing point without changing the underlying result, adding unsupported advice, or repeating everything.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the think-it-through plugin — 17 skills 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 skills/control-decks/think-it-through/explain
Any agent
npx skills add control-decks/think-it-through --skill explain
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/control-decks/think-it-through

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install think-it-through, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 skills.

Per session 62 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 343 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 $0.00062 $0.00343
Opus 5 $0.00031 $0.00171
Sonnet 5 $0.00012 $0.00069
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00034

Measured 2d ago against content hash eb346c3cdcbc, 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.

plugins/think-it-through/skills/explain/SKILL.md · 35 lines

What it actually says

💡 Think Explain

ID: think-it-through/explain
HACP: 0.4
Kind: presentation
Mode: render
Traits: read-only, semantic
Default Binding: Current Working Object, latest substantive result, or clearly named subject
Accepts: hacp/content, hacp/result; accept success and blocked, and defer pending unless the human asks to explain the proposed action
Produces: think-it-through/explanation
Duration: once

Effect: Explain the smallest unclear point at the human's requested or apparent level while preserving the object's claims, caveats, and uncertainty.

Limits: Do not invent evidence, change claims, advise, choose a direction, repeat the complete source, explain HACP automatically, or use more than one example unless requested.

Format

Begin the complete combo trace with > 🎯 **<binding>** → 💡 **EXPLAIN** when used alone. Add → 💡 **EXPLAIN** after earlier cards in a combo.

Use Explanation as the only required heading. Add Example only when one short example removes real ambiguity.

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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 · 35 lines · 62 tokens per session scan A eb346c3cdcbc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain is a skill published in the GitHub repository control-decks/think-it-through (3 stars, last pushed 28d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 62 tokens to every session and 343 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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