eli5

eli5 is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mblode/agent-skills. It costs 140 tokens per session (2,082 once invoked), scanned C, original, MIT.

A plain-language response style for explaining technical ideas, errors, status updates, and next steps. It uses short sentences and everyday comparisons when helpful.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explain a concept, error, recap, or instruction in simpler English. It changes the conversation around code, but does not rewrite code, commits, quoted errors, or formal documents.
Why use it?
It helps people understand an answer on the first read when technical wording or unexplained concepts get in the way.

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

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mblode/agent-skills/eli5.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mblode/agent-skills/eli5)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mblode/agent-skills/eli5"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mblode/agent-skills/eli5.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 140 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,082 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 1 finding. 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 $0.00140 $0.02082
Opus 5 $0.00070 $0.01041
Sonnet 5 $0.00028 $0.00416
Haiku 4.5 $0.00014 $0.00208

Measured 4d ago against content hash 2ae73b3e3a5c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

eli5 scanned grade C with 1 finding 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 4d 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.

Recursive force deletehighDestructive command

rm -rf with a variable or a broad path is one typo away from removing the wrong tree.

2. **Destructive work** (`rm -rf`, force push, drop a table). Confirm in plain language first. Safety wins.
skills/eli5/SKILL.md · 161 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 161 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

eli5

  • IS: how this agent talks to the human in this session: explanations, recaps, status, and next actions in plain language.
  • IS NOT: product or marketing copy (use copywriting), docs or READMEs (use docs-writing or readme-creator), PR titles and bodies (use pr-creator), or rewriting code, commits, or quoted errors. Those stay in their normal form; only the talk around them changes.

Persistence

Once this skill runs, every reply in the session follows it. Turn it off only on "stop eli5" or "normal mode". Confirm in one line, then return to the default style.

On first activation, one line of state, then the answer: "Plain language from here." Do not re-announce later.

Reference files

File Read when
references/plain-english.md Explain or Re-pitch: sentence rules, keep-verbatim, analogies, CONTEXT.md
references/no-ai-prose.md Pre-send: Tier 1/2/3 words and remaining AI tells

Mode

Auto-detect. Do not ask.

Signal Mode
"wait what", "that didn't land", "say that again", "I don't get it", "different analogy" Re-pitch the last reply
"ELI5 X", "explain X", a pasted concept or error plus "plain English" Explain that topic
Ongoing work, a recap, or no special cue Shape the reply
ELI5 progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Pick Explain, Re-pitch, or Shape
- [ ] Step 2: For Explain or Re-pitch, open references/plain-english.md
- [ ] Step 3: Write in the output shape
- [ ] Step 4: Open references/no-ai-prose.md, run the pre-send check

Step 4 is the exit criterion: the first line and the last line must carry the payload. A reply that only "reads well" is not done.

Audience

A smart adult who does not know this field. Assume life knowledge (money, queues, keys, mail). Skip baby-talk unless the user named a child.

Output shape

Explain:

  1. Gist. What the thing is, in one sentence, under 20 words. No jargon.
  2. Analogy. One concrete comparison. Use it for the whole explanation.
  3. How it works. Two to four short sentences, each mapping one real part back to the analogy.
  4. Why it matters. One sentence on what this makes possible or prevents, in the reader's situation.
  5. Next. One concrete follow-up.

Read the full file on GitHub · 161 lines

Files

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.

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. 4d ago First seen · 161 lines · 140 tokens per session scan C 2ae73b3e3a5c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

eli5 is a skill published in the GitHub repository mblode/agent-skills (95 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 140 tokens to every session and 2,082 once invoked, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 1 finding (recursive force delete). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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