clarify

clarify is a skill for Claude Code from mehrad-dm/mastermind. It costs 108 tokens per session (987 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for rewriting an explanation after the reader says it was confusing, too technical, or too long.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to simplify a previous answer, introduce missing background, replace jargon, or present a complicated relationship visually.
Why use it?
It identifies whether the problem was missing context, unfamiliar words, a structure that needs a diagram, or too much information at once.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the mastermind plugin — 32 skills, 4 agents, 1 hook shipped together

Good fit Use it to simplify a previous answer, introduce missing background, replace jargon, or present a complicated relationship visually.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/mehrad-dm/mastermind/clarify
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 mehrad-dm/mastermind --skill clarify
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mehrad-dm/mastermind

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install mastermind, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills, 4 agents, 1 hook.

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 clarify

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mehrad-dm/mastermind/clarify/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mehrad-dm/mastermind/clarify)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mehrad-dm/mastermind/clarify"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mehrad-dm/mastermind/clarify/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 clarify

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mehrad-dm/mastermind/clarify"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mehrad-dm/mastermind/clarify.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 108 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 987 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 $0.00108 $0.00987
Opus 5.5 $0.00043 $0.00395
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00022 $0.00197
Haiku 4.5 $0.00011 $0.00099

Measured 15d ago against content hash 210fe243b221, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

clarify 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 15d 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/clarify/SKILL.md · 69 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 69 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

MasterMind: Clarify

Your last answer failed. That is the fact to accept before writing anything else. Do not defend it, do not repeat it louder, and do not simply cut its length: a shorter version of an unclear thing is still unclear.

Read ~/.mastermind/engineering/core/clarity.md for the register. Use the project's own terms from .mastermind/brief.md if it exists.

Work out what actually failed

One of four things went wrong. The repair differs for each, so name it before you rewrite.

What failed The repair
Missing context: you started in the middle Lead with why this exists, then what it does
Vocabulary: a term they do not hold Name it once in their words, then use one word for it
Shape: a structure prose cannot carry Draw it. See below
Volume: correct, and too much at once One claim, then stop and ask what they want next

Two forms. Pick, do not offer a menu

Words. Lead with the point. Short sentences, active voice, one instruction each, no hedging. State what you would do and why, in the order they need it, not the order you discovered it.

A picture, when the thing has a shape: how parts connect, what calls what, what changed, what a sequence does, what the data looks like. Reach for the lightest form that carries it:

  • a file layout: a shallow tree, one line of responsibility per entry, for where things live
  • a call stack: an indented call tree, for what happens in what order
  • a component tree: the same for a UI, keeping the state and the boundaries, dropping the rest
  • types and signatures: the shape of the data, which is often the whole answer
  • pseudocode: for an algorithm, where real code carries noise the reader does not need
  • a table: for a comparison or a set of options
  • a diff, and not only of code: mark a call tree, a file layout or a state machine with + and - to show a change against a shape the reader already holds
  • a mermaid diagram: state and sequence diagrams, only when the relationships genuinely need one. Nine boxes at most; past that, draw an overview and a detail. Remove every box, arrow and label whose removal loses nothing, and give emphasis to one or two elements, never four

Read the full file on GitHub · 69 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 15d ago Changed · +3 lines · +108 tokens per session 210fe243b221
  2. 1mo ago First seen · 66 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 4df6a592b210

Subscribe to this mod's changes

clarify is a skill published in the GitHub repository mehrad-dm/mastermind (23 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 108 tokens to every session and 987 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.