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 sammcj/agentic-coding --skill explaingit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sammcj/agentic-codingWrote 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/sammcj/agentic-coding/explain)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sammcj/agentic-coding/explain"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sammcj/agentic-coding/explain/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/sammcj/agentic-coding/explain"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sammcj/agentic-coding/explain.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 | $0.00026 | $0.00675 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00010 | $0.00270 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00005 | $0.00135 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00003 | $0.00068 |
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 11d 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 — 37 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Arguments: $ARGUMENTS. If the first word is html use HTML mode, unless otherwise instructed use terminal mode. The rest is the topic. With no topic, explain what the conversation is currently about.
Both modes
- Show the real mechanism: the actual components, data flow and state changes, with real names, shapes and numbers. A labelled box saying "processing" explains nothing.
- Picture first, prose second. Prose is short captions keyed to the picture.
- Captions follow Simplified Technical English: max 20 words per step, 25 per description, active voice, one idea per sentence, plain words with one meaning. Keep code and identifiers verbatim.
- For code in the current project, read it first and cite
path:line.
Terminal mode
- Draw an ASCII diagram, at most 80 columns wide. Stack vertically rather than in one long row.
- Follow it with numbered captions that use the diagram's labels.
HTML mode
- Create a task per step below, then work them to completion.
- Load the
html-design-examplesskill for visual patterns, if available. - Write one self-contained page to
.explain/<kebab-slug>.htmlin the working directory: inline CSS and JS, no build step. Reuse the slug when revising the same topic. In a git repo, append.explain/to$(git rev-parse --git-path info/exclude)if missing, so pages stay untracked without touching.gitignore. - Put the key picture in the first 1200x800 screen. Detail and depth go below it. Done when a reader gets the core idea without scrolling.
- Draw diagrams as inline SVG so parts can highlight and animate. For a large flowchart or sequence, Mermaid from
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/mermaid@latest/dist/mermaid.esm.min.mjsis fine. - For a process (pipeline, algorithm, protocol, request lifecycle), build a step-through: scenes driven by one step index, with prev/next buttons, arrow keys and play/pause. Each scene highlights what changed and shows a one-line caption. Load on the final, fully built scene so the first screen shows the whole picture. Done when buttons, arrow keys and play/pause all move the step index.
- Add other controls (sliders, toggles, compare views) only where changing a value teaches something.
- Support light and dark via
prefers-color-scheme. Text meets WCAG AA contrast. - If a browser tool is available, screenshot the first 1200x800 screen in light and dark, and read the console. Fix clipped or overlapping text and any errors. With no browser tool, say the page was not visually checked.
- Reply with the page path and a 2-3 line summary, leaving the HTML out of the reply.
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.
- 11d ago First seen · 37 lines · 26 tokens per session scan A ac3ed48dd957
explain is a skill published in the GitHub repository sammcj/agentic-coding (164 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 26 tokens to every session and 675 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-10-05.
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