define-language

A workflow for building a shared glossary of domain terms from the conversation. Domain terms are words with specific meanings in a product or business.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for defining consistent terminology, identifying ambiguous terms, and saving the resulting glossary to `specs/UBIQUITOUS_LANGUAGE_LATEST.md`.
Why use it?
It reduces confusion when different words mean the same thing or one word is used in several ways.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/danielvm-git/bigpowers/define-language
Any agent
npx skills add danielvm-git/bigpowers --skill define-language
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/danielvm-git/bigpowers

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 71 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 859 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 $0.00071 $0.00859
Opus 5 $0.00036 $0.00430
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00172
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00086

Measured 2d ago against content hash d9f1b02446d1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

define-language 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.

.cline/skills/define-language/SKILL.md · 81 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 81 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Define Language

Extract and formalize domain terminology from the current conversation into a consistent glossary, saved to specs/UBIQUITOUS_LANGUAGE_LATEST.md.

Distinct from model-domain and deepen-architecture: Use this skill to produce a canonical glossary of terms (words and definitions). Use model-domain to stress-test a plan through an interview that resolves domain model decisions. Use deepen-architecture to find module-level refactoring opportunities in the codebase.

HARD GATE — Ubiquitous language is NOT optional. Every term in the domain that could be misunderstood must be glossed. Ambiguity = rework.

Process

  1. Scan the conversation for domain-relevant nouns, verbs, and concepts
  2. Identify problems:
    • Same word used for different concepts (ambiguity)
    • Different words used for the same concept (synonyms)
    • Vague or overloaded terms
  3. Propose a canonical glossary with opinionated term choices
  4. Write to specs/UBIQUITOUS_LANGUAGE_LATEST.md in the working directory using the format below
  5. Output a summary inline in the conversation

Output Format

Write a specs/UBIQUITOUS_LANGUAGE_LATEST.md file with this structure:

# Ubiquitous Language

## Order lifecycle

| Term        | Definition                                              | Aliases to avoid      |
| ----------- | ------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------- |
| **Order**   | A customer's request to purchase one or more items      | Purchase, transaction |
| **Invoice** | A request for payment sent to a customer after delivery | Bill, payment request |

## People

| Term         | Definition                                  | Aliases to avoid       |
| ------------ | ------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- |
| **Customer** | A person or organization that places orders | Client, buyer, account |
| **User**     | An authentication identity in the system    | Login, account         |

## Relationships

- An **Invoice** belongs to exactly one **Customer**
- An **Order** produces one or more **Invoices**

## Example dialogue

> **Dev:** "When a **Customer** places an **Order**, do we create the **Invoice** immediately?"
> **Domain expert:** "No — an **Invoice** is only generated once a **Fulfillment** is confirmed."

## Flagged ambiguities

- "account" was used to mean both **Customer** and **User** — these are distinct concepts.

Read the full file on GitHub · 81 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. 2d ago First seen · 81 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A d9f1b02446d1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

define-language is a skill published in the GitHub repository danielvm-git/bigpowers (156 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 859 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.

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