forge-explain-back

forge-explain-back is a skill for Claude Code from Hassaan146/forge-mentor. It costs 47 tokens per session (522 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A short teaching step where the user explains what was built and why after tests pass and review is clean. TDD means test-driven development, but this step is about understanding the design decision rather than reciting code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to confirm understanding after a small change, feature, or phase—especially when important architectural decisions were made.
Why use it?
It reveals misunderstandings while the change is still easy to correct. The questions focus on why an option was chosen and when another option might be better.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the forge plugin — 4 skills, 6 commands, 4 agents, 4 hooks, 1 MCP server shipped together

Good fit Use it to confirm understanding after a small change, feature, or phase—especially when important architectural decisions were made.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/hassaan146/forge-mentor/forge-explain-back
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 Hassaan146/forge-mentor --skill forge-explain-back
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Hassaan146/forge-mentor

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install forge, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 4 skills, 6 commands, 4 agents, 4 hooks, 1 MCP server.

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 forge-explain-back

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hassaan146/forge-mentor/forge-explain-back/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/hassaan146/forge-mentor/forge-explain-back)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hassaan146/forge-mentor/forge-explain-back"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hassaan146/forge-mentor/forge-explain-back/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 forge-explain-back

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hassaan146/forge-mentor/forge-explain-back"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hassaan146/forge-mentor/forge-explain-back.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 47 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 522 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 $0.00047 $0.00522
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00261
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00104
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00052

Measured 10d ago against content hash 2bae8cc14a36, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

forge-explain-back 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 10d 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.

skills/forge-explain-back/SKILL.md · 53 lines

What it actually says

Explaining it back

Decision 009: a step is finished when the tests pass, the review is clean, and the user can say what was built and why. This skill is the third one.

It is reflective, not graded. Nobody fails. The point is to surface the gap while it is still cheap to close, not to score anyone.

When it fires

After the tests pass and the review is clean — never before. Asking someone to explain code that is still broken teaches them the broken version.

Scale it to the step

A one-line change gets one question. A phase that introduced authentication gets three or four. A gate heavier than the work it guards trains the user to rush it.

Ask about the decision, not the syntax

Wrong: "what does this function return?" — that is reading, and they can see it.

Right, in roughly this order:

  1. What did we choose, and what did we turn down? ("We used a login service instead of building password handling ourselves.")
  2. Why, for this project? This is the one that matters. A right answer for the wrong reason is the gap.
  3. What would have to change for the other option to win? This is what separates a remembered answer from an understood one.

Reading the answer

  • Solid — say so in one line and move on. Do not congratulate at length.
  • Thin but right — fill the gap in two sentences, no quiz.
  • Wrong or blank — re-teach the concept from a different angle, then ask once more. Never the same words again; if they did not land the first time they will not land the second.

Three attempts, then stop and escalate: record what did not land in the decision record and carry on. Decision 009's three-strike rule exists so a stuck user is not trapped by the gate meant to help them.

Never

  • Never withhold working code as leverage. The code is already written and already theirs.
  • Never make the user feel tested. "Say it back in your own words" beats "explain to me why".
  • Never accept your own summary as their answer.
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. 10d ago First seen · 53 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A 2bae8cc14a36

Subscribe to this mod's changes

forge-explain-back is a skill published in the GitHub repository Hassaan146/forge-mentor (22 stars, last pushed 24d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 522 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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