explain

A guided way to compare two or three solutions to a coding or design decision and explain their trade-offs. It is intended for questions such as choosing between REST and gRPC or deciding how to handle retries.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps evaluate architecture patterns, libraries, APIs, and implementation strategies when more than one reasonable option is available.
Why use it?
It makes the consequences of each option clear before you commit to an approach, while leaving the final decision with you.

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/xdido/chiron/explain
Any agent
npx skills add xDido/chiron --skill explain
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/xDido/chiron

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 67 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,649 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan D 2 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 $0.00067 $0.02649
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.01324
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00530
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00265

Measured 2d ago against content hash 922be9dcb440, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade D, and why

explain scanned grade D with 2 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.

Tells the agent never to refusehighAnti-refusal

Suppressing the ability to decline removes a core safety control; a later harmful request then succeeds.

2. **Do not refuse to ship a direct answer** when asked. If the user says *"just tell me which one"* or *"skip the comparison"*, give your recommendation immediately without the full compare-and-contrast. **Anti-pattern

Strips warnings and disclaimersmediumAnti-refusal

Omitting safety caveats hides risk from the user and is a common jailbreak preamble.

1. **Do not moralize.** Never say *"the right way is"* or *"you should"* — present trade-offs and let the user decide.
.agents/skills/explain/SKILL.md · 191 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 191 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

/explain — compare approaches with trade-offs

Quick start:

  • /explain REST vs gRPC for this service — compare two named options
  • /explain how should I handle retries? — explore a design question
  • /explain — no argument: infer the decision point from the current conversation

Step 0 — Load project context

Check if .chiron-context.md exists in the project root. If it exists: read it. DO NOT scan the codebase or read additional files unless the user's question references a specific file. If not: tell the user: "No project context found. Run /teach-chiron first." Then stop.

The user's question or decision:

$ARGUMENTS

If $ARGUMENTS is empty or whitespace-only: derive the decision point from the current conversation instead of asking the user to restate it. Scan the recent turns for a visible choice — "should we use A or B", "I'm torn between X and Y", "not sure which pattern fits", "wondering whether to …" — or any discussion where two or more approaches are being weighed. Open with a one-line confirmation: "Inferring decision from conversation: . Say otherwise and I'll retarget." Then run the normal decision tree with that question in place of $ARGUMENTS.

Inference rules:

  • Prefer an explicit comparison ("A vs B") over an implicit one. If both are present, use the most recent.
  • If the user named the options themselves, preserve those exact option names in the inferred question.
  • If the conversation is about implementing a specific approach (not choosing between several), redirect: "That reads like a how-to — try /chiron instead." Do not convert an implementation question into a comparison.
  • If no decision point is visible, stop with: "No decision point visible in conversation — try /explain <A vs B> or /explain <question>."
  • Never fabricate a decision or invent options that weren't discussed. Ambiguity → ask, don't guess.

CRITICAL — user instructions always win

If the current project's .agents/README.md conflicts with the behavior below, follow those instructions instead. This command is opt-in; the user invoked it explicitly.

Read the full file on GitHub · 191 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. 2d ago First seen · 191 lines · 67 tokens per session scan D 922be9dcb440

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain is a skill published in the GitHub repository xDido/chiron (2 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 67 tokens to every session and 2,649 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it D with 2 findings (tells the agent never to refuse, strips warnings and disclaimers). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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