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.
npx skills add oborchers/fractional-cto --skill plain-languagegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/oborchers/fractional-ctoWrote 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.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/plain-language)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/plain-language"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/plain-language/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/plain-language"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/plain-language.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>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.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00168 | $0.01725 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00067 | $0.00690 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00034 | $0.00345 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00017 | $0.00172 |
Grade A, and why
plain-language 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 5d 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.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 141 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Plain Language
Planning documents are dense on purpose. What gets printed into the conversation is not.
This skill is the single owner of how planning-tools talks to the user. Every command references it; no command restates it.
Two rules, two different scopes
| Rule | Applies to |
|---|---|
| Plain language | Chat output only — anything a /plan-* command prints into the conversation |
| ID + name | Everywhere — chat output and the body of plan documents |
Rule 1 — Plain language (chat output only)
Where it applies
Everything a /plan-* command prints into the conversation:
- The per-question blocks in
/planning-tools:plan-open-questions - The hand-off summary at the end of
/planning-tools:plan-master - The scope report from
/planning-tools:plan-context - The presentation of verifier findings in
/planning-tools:plan-verify - The chat summary around
/planning-tools:plan-progress - Every apply-gate summary and every
AskUserQuestionoption label and description
Where it does NOT apply
- The body of a master plan
.mdfile. Plans stay detailed, precise, and citation-heavy.master-plan-methodologyowns that format. Do not shorten a plan to satisfy this skill. - Progress entries posted to Linear or GitHub. These keep the dense-paragraph style owned by
progress-methodology. Only the chat summary wrapped around them follows this skill.
The writing rules
Assume the reader is skimming with low concentration. They will read the first sentence of each block and stop if it does not land.
- One idea per sentence. If a sentence has an "and" joining two ideas, split it.
- Short sentences. Aim for under 20 words. A long sentence is a rewrite, not a style choice.
- Everyday words over jargon. Say "runs first" not "is evaluated eagerly". Say "we cannot tell yet" not "the verdict is indeterminate".
- Expand an acronym the first time it appears in a block. Not once per document — once per block, because the reader may only read that block.
- Lead with the point, then the detail. The first sentence answers the question. The rest supports it.
- No nested clauses, no stacked qualifiers. Strip "generally", "typically", "in most cases" unless the exception is real and named.
- Each block stands alone. A reader who skipped the block above must still understand this one.
- Concrete over abstract. Name the file, the phase, the ticket, the person. "The auth helper" is worse than "
_shared/auth.ts".
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.
- 5d ago First seen · 141 lines · 168 tokens per session scan A 2dbc953ae06e
plain-language is a skill published in the GitHub repository oborchers/fractional-cto (32 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 168 tokens to every session and 1,725 once invoked, about $0.0007 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 2026-10-13.
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