eli5

A skill for explaining technical or non-technical topics in very simple language with everyday analogies.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to simplify concepts, code, error messages, and architecture decisions, especially when someone asks for an explanation suitable for a five-year-old.
Why use it?
It helps readers understand unfamiliar ideas without needing prior knowledge of programming or system design.

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/drn/dots/eli5
Any agent
npx skills add drn/dots --skill eli5
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/drn/dots

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 54 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 581 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 $0.00054 $0.00581
Opus 5 $0.00027 $0.00291
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00116
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00058

Measured 2d ago against content hash c7538223df6a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

eli5 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.

agents/skills/eli5/SKILL.md · 53 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 53 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Explain Like I'm 5

Break down a topic so a 5-year-old could understand it.

Arguments

  • $ARGUMENTS - The topic, concept, code, error message, or architecture decision to explain

Instructions

Step 1: Identify the topic

Read $ARGUMENTS. If empty, ask the user what they want explained and stop.

The topic can be anything:

  • A programming concept (e.g., "recursion", "dependency injection")
  • A piece of code (read the file or selection first)
  • An error message or stack trace
  • An architecture decision or system design
  • A non-technical concept

If the topic references a file or code, read it before explaining.

Step 2: Explain it using the ADEPT pattern

Structure your explanation in this order:

  1. Core idea first. State what it is in one plain sentence. No jargon, no acronyms unless you define them immediately. This is the "headline" -- if the reader stops here, they still learned something.

  2. Analogy. Connect the concept to something from everyday life -- toys, food, playgrounds, animals, building blocks, a library, a kitchen. Pick an analogy that maps well to the actual mechanics, not just the surface.

  3. Diagram (when visual). If the concept has structure, flow, or relationships, include a short ASCII diagram. Keep it under 10 lines. Skip this for purely abstract concepts where a diagram would not help.

  4. Example. Walk through one concrete, minimal example. For code concepts, show 3-5 lines of real code with a one-line comment. For non-code topics, give a specific scenario.

  5. Plain-English summary. One sentence a child could repeat back. Connect the analogy to the real thing: "So [analogy] is like [real thing] because..."

Rules:

  • Use short sentences. Active voice. Simple words.
  • Do not hedge, qualify, or add caveats. Be confident and direct.
  • Accuracy matters but simplicity wins -- leave out details that do not help understanding.
  • If the topic has multiple parts, build up layer by layer. Start with the simplest piece and add complexity one step at a time.
  • Maximum 2-3 short paragraphs of prose per section. Brevity is the goal.

Read the full file on GitHub · 53 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 · 53 lines · 54 tokens per session scan A c7538223df6a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

eli5 is a skill published in the GitHub repository drn/dots (23 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 54 tokens to every session and 581 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 2026-08-30.

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