explanation-guidance

explanation-guidance is a skill for Claude Code from testdouble/han. It costs 160 tokens per session (838 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

Guidance for explaining technical work to people who will not implement it. It focuses on describing outcomes they can observe rather than internal mechanisms.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when a skill needs to ask for a decision, explain a result, or pause work in plain language.
Why use it?
It helps make escalations, confirmations, and stopping points understandable to non-implementers.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the han-communication plugin — 3 skills, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Use it when a skill needs to ask for a decision, explain a result, or pause work in plain language.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add testdouble/han
Claude Code
/plugin install han-communication

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install han-communication, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 3 skills, 1 agent.

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 explanation-guidance

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/testdouble/han/explanation-guidance/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/testdouble/han/explanation-guidance)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/testdouble/han/explanation-guidance"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/testdouble/han/explanation-guidance/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 explanation-guidance

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/testdouble/han/explanation-guidance"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/testdouble/han/explanation-guidance.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 160 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 838 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 $0.00160 $0.00838
Opus 5.5 $0.00064 $0.00335
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00032 $0.00168
Haiku 4.5 $0.00016 $0.00084

Measured 1mo ago against content hash c097d73f02d0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explanation-guidance 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 1mo 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.

han-communication/skills/explanation-guidance/SKILL.md · 63 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 63 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Project Context

  • personal config directory: !bash "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/han-config-dir.sh" 2>/dev/null || echo "$HOME/.claude"
  • project .han/config.md: !cat .han/config.md 2>/dev/null || echo ""

As your first action, use the Read tool on .han/config.md inside the personal config directory path above. A read that returns no file is no personal configuration: continue silently. When that file or the project .han/config.md probe supplies content, apply it per config-rule.md, which governs precedence between the two files, relative-path resolution, and what to do with a file that reads but cannot be used.

Explanation Guidance

You have invoked explanation-guidance to source the shared explanation standard before you talk to a person. This skill surfaces the standard into your own context and hands control back. It is a means to writing your turn, not the turn itself: apply what it surfaces, then RETURN to the workflow that called you and finish it.

This skill is inline — it runs in your context, not an isolated one, so the standard it surfaces stays available to you after it returns. Do not treat anything here as a stopping point or a final answer.

When this standard applies

It applies to what you say to a person in a turn: an escalation, an opening confirmation turn, a stop for a missing input, or any explanation of a technical consequence to someone who will not implement the work.

It does not apply to the written deliverable you are producing. That is governed by the readability standard, which you source through han-communication:readability-guidance. A run often needs both, at different moments.

Step 1: Read the standard

Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/explanation-rule.md so its full content enters your context. It carries the concrete-outcome requirement, the four-part form for a question shaped like data entry, the unintroduced-term test, and the rule that the consequence comes before the technical detail.

Read the full file on GitHub · 63 lines

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. 1mo ago First seen · 63 lines · 160 tokens per session scan A c097d73f02d0

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explanation-guidance is a skill published in the GitHub repository testdouble/han (304 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 160 tokens to every session and 838 once invoked, about $0.0006 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 2026-08-30.

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