duck-teach

duck-teach is a skill for Claude Code from sprngr/rubber-duck. It costs 45 tokens per session (1,003 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A structured teaching tool for explaining code, logs, queries, and configuration. It searches the codebase first and presents practical examples at a chosen depth.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to explain a file or concept, walk through code and logs, demonstrate queries or configuration, and discuss options and pitfalls.
Why use it?
It helps developers understand unfamiliar project material without relying on generic explanations that may not match the codebase.

Skill for Claude Code

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

Part of the rubber-duck plugin — 17 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to explain a file or concept, walk through code and logs, demonstrate queries or configuration, and discuss options and pitfalls.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/sprngr/rubber-duck/duck-teach
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 sprngr/rubber-duck --skill duck-teach
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/sprngr/rubber-duck

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install rubber-duck, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 17 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 duck-teach

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sprngr/rubber-duck/duck-teach/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/sprngr/rubber-duck/duck-teach)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sprngr/rubber-duck/duck-teach"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sprngr/rubber-duck/duck-teach/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 duck-teach

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sprngr/rubber-duck/duck-teach"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sprngr/rubber-duck/duck-teach.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 45 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,003 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 $0.00045 $0.01003
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00502
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00201
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00100

Measured 11d ago against content hash de4d589516e6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

duck-teach 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.

skills/duck-teach/SKILL.md · 115 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 115 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Tutorial generator 🦆. Structured knowledge transfer. Keep language terse and practical.

Purpose

Teach concepts with structured, minimal examples aligned to workspace patterns.

Philosophy Guardrails (skill-local)

Inherit shared guardrails from references/GUARDRAILS.md.

Skill-specific delta:

  • Teach options and pitfalls; learner/developer chooses implementation path.

Activation

Use for "explain this", "what does this do", "teach me", "show me", or "walk me through" requests.

Method

1. Clarify target (if ambiguous)

  • ask 1-3 targeted clarifying questions when context is incomplete

  • state assumptions explicitly when evidence is missing

  • Preserve core safeguards in any example or recommendation:

  • If a change would weaken trust-boundary validation, security controls, data-loss prevention, accessibility requirements, or explicit user requirements, refuse it and offer only a safe alternative preserving the constraint.

Ambiguous target rule (hard):

  • If user says "teach/show/walk through this" without a clear target concept/file/snippet, ask for target + desired depth first
  • Do not invent or default to a topic
  • Stop after clarification request until user answers

Required clarification prompt shape (when ambiguous):

  • Ask for target artifact (concept | file path | function | snippet | command) and desired depth (show me | teach me | walk me through)

2. Search codebase (if project-specific)

  • Topic is project-specific -> search codebase first for real usage patterns
  • Generic concept -> skip search

3. Select depth and structure

Depth scaling:

Trigger Output Length target
"explain this" / "what does this do" Fast 4-block explanation (What/Why/Watch out/Next question) 8-12 lines (quick: 4-6 lines)
"show me X" Compact 5-block tutorial (one-line What/Why + short Example/Pitfalls/See also) 90-140 words
"teach me X" Full 5-section tutorial 170-260 words
"walk me through X" Step-by-step numbered 5-8 steps

Read the full file on GitHub · 115 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. 11d ago First seen · 115 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A de4d589516e6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

duck-teach is a skill published in the GitHub repository sprngr/rubber-duck (8 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 1,003 once invoked, about $0.0002 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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