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.
npx skills add ericrisco/rsc-harness --skill eli5git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ericrisco/rsc-harnessWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ericrisco/rsc-harness/eli5)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ericrisco/rsc-harness/eli5"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ericrisco/rsc-harness/eli5/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ericrisco/rsc-harness/eli5"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ericrisco/rsc-harness/eli5.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector pass
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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00071 | $0.00809 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00028 | $0.00324 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00014 | $0.00162 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00007 | $0.00081 |
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 1mo 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 64 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
eli5 — explain it to someone who knows nothing
The topic is whatever the user named. With no topic named, it is the one the conversation is already on. The audience is someone with zero background: no vocabulary, no context, no patience for a definition that needs another definition.
The contract
- A page, not a paragraph. The output is one self-contained HTML page, big visuals first, words second. Open it when it is written.
- Picture carries the idea, words label it. If the page still makes sense with the text removed, it is working. Aim for a caption per picture, not a paragraph per picture.
- Everyday objects only. Compare to things a person has physically handled: boxes, keys, queues at a counter, post, a light switch. Never explain one unknown with another unknown.
- Zero jargon, and zero smuggled jargon. No term appears without being shown first. "It caches" is jargon; "it keeps a copy nearby so it doesn't have to walk back" is the same fact.
- Simple, never false. When the simplification would make something untrue, say what got left out, in one line, at the end. A comfortable lie is worse than a hard truth.
- No condescension. Simple words, adult tone. The reader is new to the topic, not a child.
The shape of the page
one sentence: what this thing is, in words a stranger would use
big picture 1 : the thing, drawn
big picture 2 : the thing doing its job, step by step
one line : the part people get wrong
one line : what this explanation left out (only if it left something out)
Three to five visuals is the whole page. Inline SVG or plain HTML boxes beat any chart library here: the drawing has to be readable on a phone, at a glance, with no legend to study.
open path/to/eli5-<topic>.html
Anti-patterns
| Anti-pattern | Why it fails | Do this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Define a term with two more terms | The reader loses the thread on line one | Show the thing, then name it |
| A wall of text with one decorative image | That is a blog post with a picture | Picture first, caption second |
| "Imagine you're a packet travelling…" | Cute framing, still abstract | Compare to an object the reader has held |
| Simplify until it is wrong | The reader now has to unlearn it | Keep it true and name what you dropped |
| Baby talk, emoji, exclamation marks | Talks down to the reader | Plain adult words, short sentences |
| Five diagrams of the same idea | Repetition reads as padding | One picture per genuinely new idea |
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.
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.
- 1mo ago First seen · 64 lines · 71 tokens per session scan A 7ce678fe19a2
eli5 is a skill published in the GitHub repository ericrisco/rsc-harness (247 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 71 tokens to every session and 809 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-09-03.
Other skills, from other repositories
example-walkthrough
Guided end-to-end build of the canonical worked example under examples/sample-project/. Walks through each artifact in spec-driven order (PRD → requirements → design → tasks → agent roster → phased prompts → implementation plan), invoking the right specialist agent for each. Use when bootstrapping the worked example…
agent-challenges
Agent skill for challenges - invoke with $agent-challenges.
tutorial
Interactive tutorial teaching Ouroboros hands-on.
managing-mcp-servers
Use when the user asks to add, change, remove, enable or disable an MCP server, or when an MCP tool is missing, needs sign-in, fails, or was blocked. ThinkRail runs pi in-process, so there is no pi command to call.
teach
Explain a body of work plainly so a person actually understands it. Runs the how and why skills and weaves what they find into one clear explanation. Use for 'teach me this', 'help me really understand X', 'explain this change or subsystem to me'.
todos
Use when the user asks for a shared plan, a task needs at least three substantive execution steps, or a loose TODO is pending. Without an explicit plan request, not for one-shot answers or checks, or one- to two-step work that is not already in the list.