ste

A writing and review guide based on ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English, a rule set for clear technical instructions. It focuses on short, direct wording with one clear meaning.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps write or review READMEs, runbooks, procedures, API documentation, prompts, agent instructions, error messages, and release notes.
Why use it?
Technical text can be misunderstood when it uses vague language, complex sentences, or inconsistent terms. Clear wording makes instructions and messages easier to follow.

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/r13v/pi-feature-dev/ste
Any agent
npx skills add r13v/pi-feature-dev --skill ste
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/r13v/pi-feature-dev

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 129 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,577 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 $0.00129 $0.01577
Opus 5 $0.00064 $0.00788
Sonnet 5 $0.00026 $0.00315
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00158

Measured 2d ago against content hash 8978a3fb536d, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ste 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 2d 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/ste/SKILL.md · 149 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 149 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

STE

Write English that has one clear meaning and a structure that is easy to parse. Preserve technical accuracy before you simplify language.

Select the Operating Mode

Use strict STE mode when the user requests ASD-STE100 compliance or works on regulated, maintenance, operational, or safety-critical documentation.

  • Apply Issue 9 rules and the applicable project directives.
  • Verify general vocabulary against the official Issue 9 dictionary.
  • Verify technical nouns and verbs against the project glossary.
  • Use STE-aligned draft when these lexical checks are not possible.

Use STE clarity mode for prompts, tool descriptions, error messages, agent instructions, status reports, translation-ready text, and other technical or operational English.

  • Transfer the clarity rules that fit the text.
  • Prefer explicit actors, actions, conditions, inputs, and results.
  • Do not imply formal ASD-STE100 compliance.

Load References Selectively

  • Read references/writing-rules.md for strict STE work, compliance reviews, safety text, word-count decisions, or rule details.
  • Read references/checklist.md for strict reviews, audits, high-risk text, or long documents. Use its quick check or full check as the task requires.
  • Read references/use-cases.md when the text type needs a clear information order or a reusable structure.
  • Read references/before-after.md when rewriting dense text, explaining changes, or producing a comparison.
  • Read all user-supplied glossaries, safety policies, style guides, and regulatory directives that apply.

If sources conflict, follow the explicit regulatory or project requirement and report the deviation. Do not merge inconsistent terminology.

Preserve Meaning

Before rewriting:

  1. Identify each fact, action, condition, limit, unit, exception, warning, causal relation, and cross-reference.
  2. Resolve what each pronoun and modifier refers to.
  3. Keep the original sequence and scope unless the user authorizes a technical change.
  4. Ask when ambiguity can change safety, responsibility, or task outcome.

Read the full file on GitHub · 149 lines

Files

What ships with it

6 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. 2d ago First seen · 149 lines · 129 tokens per session scan A 8978a3fb536d

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ste is a skill published in the GitHub repository r13v/pi-feature-dev (2 stars, last pushed 15d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 129 tokens to every session and 1,577 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.

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