explain

explain is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from melodic-software/claude-code-plugins. It costs 221 tokens per session (1,993 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A one-time explainer that rewrites a concept, code sample, error, or architecture in very simple words. It starts with a concrete example and adds technical detail only when requested.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for explaining unfamiliar code, errors, system designs, and technical ideas to beginners.
Why use it?
It helps when an explanation is too technical or a developer does not understand what something means.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the education plugin — 4 skills shipped together

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/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/explain
Any agent
npx skills add melodic-software/claude-code-plugins --skill explain
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install education, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 4 skills.

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 explain

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/explain.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/explain)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/explain"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/explain.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 221 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,993 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. 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 $0.00221 $0.01993
Opus 5 $0.00111 $0.00996
Sonnet 5 $0.00044 $0.00399
Haiku 4.5 $0.00022 $0.00199

Measured yesterday against content hash 4bf27fc951ca, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explain 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 yesterday.

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.

plugins/education/skills/explain/SKILL.md · 140 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 140 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Purpose

Explain one thing, once, in genuinely plain words. The object can be a concept, a piece of code, an error, an architecture, or the assistant's own previous output. The core move is an altitude drop: land the explanation at the lowest useful altitude first, a concrete analogy, zero jargon, then layer altitude back up only when the user asks for it. The Feynman technique is the method.

Use when: the user signals they didn't follow something, I don't get it, explain simply, what does this actually mean, rephrase that. Skip when: the user wants ongoing, multi-session coaching with persistent state (hand off to /education:teach); a plain inline answer already lands (just answer).

This skill auto-invokes (no disable-model-invocation) because "I don't get it" should reach it without the user naming a command. Auto-trigger is best-effort; /education:explain is the guaranteed path.

The core move. Plain-language first pass

  1. Identify the object. With an argument, that is the thing. Empty argument → the previous assistant response (see "Empty argument" below). Done when you can name the object in one sentence, or, on a cold start with no prior assistant message, have asked what to explain instead of guessing.
  2. Ground it, don't recall it. Re-read the actual artifact this turn, the message just sent, the file, the error text, the code. For an external concept, fetch a primary source rather than leaning on parametric memory (plugin doctrine: knowledge is grounded, not remembered). Done when this turn's explanation cites a specific passage, file, error text, or fetched primary source you re-read here. A recalled paraphrase does not count.
  3. Drop to plain. One concrete analogy from everyday life. No jargon, no term that itself needs prior knowledge. Short. If a technical word is unavoidable, define it inline in ordinary words the first time. Done when the explanation contains one everyday analogy whose structure maps to the object, a "what it's actually doing" line, and no leftover term that is not defined inline in ordinary words.
  4. Close with the handoff line (see "Handoff"). Done when the response ends with the single standard /education:teach invitation line.

Read the full file on GitHub · 140 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. yesterday First seen · 140 lines · 221 tokens per session scan A 4bf27fc951ca

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain is a skill published in the GitHub repository melodic-software/claude-code-plugins (15 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 221 tokens to every session and 1,993 once invoked, about $0.0011 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 2026-09-03.

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