clarify

clarify is a skill for Claude Code from umputun/cc-thingz. It costs 91 tokens per session (1,811 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A clarification guide for situations where a user's expectations conflict with what the software actually does. It focuses on checking intent, explaining behavior, and deciding whether a real problem exists.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when behavior seems wrong or confusing, requirements contradict each other, or the user expected one result but received another.
Why use it?
It helps distinguish misunderstandings from bugs before making changes based on an incorrect assumption.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Part of the workflow plugin — 6 skills shipped together

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/umputun/cc-thingz/clarify
Any agent
npx skills add umputun/cc-thingz --skill clarify
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/umputun/cc-thingz

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install workflow, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 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 clarify

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/clarify.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/clarify)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/clarify"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/umputun/cc-thingz/clarify.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 91 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,811 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 5.1 $0.00091 $0.01811
Opus 5 $0.00046 $0.00905
Sonnet 5 $0.00018 $0.00362
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00181

Measured 6d ago against content hash 3c98ff57c98b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-05, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

clarify 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 6d 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.

plugins/workflow/skills/clarify/SKILL.md · 215 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 215 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Clarify

Handle user confusion by verifying intent, explaining actual behavior, and determining if there's a real issue.

Primary goal: Clarify and explain, not fix. Most confusion stems from misunderstanding or forgetting, not from bugs.

Activation Triggers

  • "confused", "I'm confused", "this is confusing"
  • "I don't understand", "doesn't make sense", "makes no sense"
  • "wait, shouldn't it...", "but I thought..."
  • "why is this happening", "why does this..."
  • "I expected X but got Y"
  • "this is wrong", "something's off"
  • frustration signals, contradictory statements
  • questions that reveal misconceptions about system behavior

Important Context

Users often:

  • Work on multiple projects in parallel and may confuse behaviors between them
  • Forget how things were implemented especially after time away
  • Have outdated mental models based on old versions or different projects
  • Mix up similar concepts from different codebases or frameworks

But also:

  • Users are experienced developers - their instincts are often correct
  • Real bugs exist - about half of confusion cases point to actual issues
  • User expectations are reasonable - if something feels wrong, investigate thoroughly

Do not assume either way. Investigate before concluding. Both outcomes are equally valid:

  • User misremembered/mixed things up -> clarify with evidence
  • System has a genuine issue -> proceed to plan mode for fix

Workflow

Phase 1: Identify the Confusion

  1. Extract the core question - What specifically is the user asking about?
  2. Identify the expectation - What did the user expect to happen?
  3. Identify the reality - What is actually happening?
  4. Locate the gap - Where is the misalignment?
  5. Consider context mixing - Could user be thinking of a different project/feature?

Categories of confusion:

  • Memory gap - user forgot how it works, needs a reminder
  • Project mixing - user confused this with another project they're working on
  • Outdated mental model - user's understanding is based on old behavior
  • Architectural - misunderstanding system design, component relationships, data flow
  • Behavioral - expecting different runtime behavior than what occurs
  • Configuration - settings not producing expected results
  • Documentation - docs don't match implementation or are unclear
  • Conceptual - misunderstanding underlying concepts or patterns
  • Implementation - code doesn't work as assumed

Read the full file on GitHub · 215 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. 6d ago First seen · 215 lines · 91 tokens per session scan A 3c98ff57c98b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

clarify is a skill published in the GitHub repository umputun/cc-thingz (466 stars, last pushed 12d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 91 tokens to every session and 1,811 once invoked, about $0.0005 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 2026-08-30.