technical-communication

technical-communication is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from jamestorrevillas/dev-skills. It costs 69 tokens per session (629 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to explaining technical subjects clearly to people with different levels of technical knowledge. It recommends starting with the practical impact and using familiar comparisons for complex ideas.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing explanations, technical proposals, stakeholder updates, or other communication about software and engineering work.
Why use it?
It helps readers understand technical decisions without requiring them to know the underlying jargon or systems.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it when writing explanations, technical proposals, stakeholder updates, or other communication about software and engineering work.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jamestorrevillas/dev-skills/technical-communication
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 jamestorrevillas/dev-skills --skill technical-communication
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jamestorrevillas/dev-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 technical-communication

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamestorrevillas/dev-skills/technical-communication.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamestorrevillas/dev-skills/technical-communication)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jamestorrevillas/dev-skills/technical-communication"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jamestorrevillas/dev-skills/technical-communication.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 69 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 629 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 $0.00069 $0.00629
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.00315
Sonnet 5 $0.00014 $0.00126
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00063

Measured 7d ago against content hash 47a35dd0c4cc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

technical-communication 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 7d 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.

.github/skills/technical-communication/SKILL.md · 95 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 95 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Technical Communication

The Core Problem

Technical people communicate for accuracy. Non-technical people communicate for decisions. These are different goals requiring different approaches.

Rule: Lead with impact, follow with mechanism. Never the reverse.


Audience-First Framework

Before writing or speaking, answer:

  1. Who is the audience? (developer, PM, executive, client)
  2. What decision do they need to make?
  3. What do they already know?
  4. What do they care about? (reliability, cost, speed, risk)

Then adapt every word to those answers.


Explaining Technical Concepts

The Analogy Method

Find a familiar concept that shares the same structure:

Cache → A sticky note on your desk vs going to the filing cabinet
API → A restaurant menu — you order, the kitchen delivers, you don't see the kitchen
Microservices → A food court vs a single restaurant kitchen

The Why-Before-What Pattern

WRONG: "We need to implement Redis caching."
RIGHT: "Our API is responding slowly under load. 
        Caching the most frequent DB queries in Redis 
        would cut response time by ~70% at minimal cost."

Always lead with the problem and impact, then the solution.


Writing for Different Audiences

For Executives

  • One paragraph max per topic
  • Lead with business impact (cost, risk, user experience)
  • No acronyms without expansion
  • Include a clear recommendation

For Product Managers

  • Connect every technical decision to user or product impact
  • Flag trade-offs that affect timeline or scope
  • Be clear about what you need from them (decision, info, approval)

For Other Developers

  • Be precise and specific
  • Include relevant context (why, not just what)
  • Reference code, docs, or tickets directly

The BLUF Format (Bottom Line Up Front)

For all written technical communication:

[One sentence: what you want them to know or do]

[2-3 sentences: context and reasoning]

[Optional: details, alternatives, risks for those who want depth]

Read the full file on GitHub · 95 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. 7d ago First seen · 95 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 47a35dd0c4cc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

technical-communication is a skill published in the GitHub repository jamestorrevillas/dev-skills (3 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 69 tokens to every session and 629 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.