x9-explain-again

x9-explain-again is a skill for Claude Code from xonika9/agent-skills. It costs 98 tokens per session (430 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guidance note for simplifying part of an immediately preceding assistant answer when the user says they did not understand it.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for clarifying one confusing claim, conclusion, example, or step from the previous answer. It is not intended for a new, standalone request to explain a topic.
Why use it?
It provides a different explanation method, such as an analogy or concrete example, instead of merely repeating the same wording.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions Claude Code; mentions Codex.

Part of the x9-agent-skills plugin — 18 skills shipped together

Good fit It is for clarifying one confusing claim, conclusion, example, or step from the previous answer. It is not intended for a new, standalone request to explain a topic.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/xonika9/agent-skills/x9-explain-again
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 xonika9/agent-skills --skill x9-explain-again
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/xonika9/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install x9-agent-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 18 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 x9-explain-again

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xonika9/agent-skills/x9-explain-again/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/xonika9/agent-skills/x9-explain-again)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xonika9/agent-skills/x9-explain-again"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xonika9/agent-skills/x9-explain-again/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 x9-explain-again

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/xonika9/agent-skills/x9-explain-again"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/xonika9/agent-skills/x9-explain-again.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 98 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 430 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 $0.00098 $0.00430
Opus 5 $0.00049 $0.00215
Sonnet 5 $0.00020 $0.00086
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00043

Measured 9d ago against content hash ce3616d8edd5, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

x9-explain-again 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 9d 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/x9-explain-again/SKILL.md · 27 lines

What it actually says

Explain again

Repair understanding of one fragment of the immediately previous substantive assistant answer. This is a model-invoked skill in Claude Code and Codex; portable means structural compatibility only, not verified invocation behavior.

Trigger boundary

Use this skill only when the user's message is explicit confusion about the immediately preceding substantive answer in the same thread. That answer is an assistant response to the user, excluding tool output, status updates, system messages, and imported older chats.

Do not treat a general request to explain a topic as a reference to a prior answer. Explaining a provided article or source remains a source-explanation task. Creating a durable visual teaching artifact belongs to ce-explain; creating a visual scheme belongs to x9-diagrams.

Response

Identify the specific claim, conclusion, example, or step that is unclear. Add only the context needed to make that fragment understandable, then use a different explanatory method: an analogy, a concrete example, a causal breakdown, or simpler words. Include a tiny example only when it resolves the confusion.

Do not merely shorten or repeat the earlier wording. Do not create files, invoke ce-explain or x9-diagrams automatically, or start an autonomous loop. If the user still does not understand, one more bounded explanation is allowed; each new request still needs a clear referent.

When the unclear referent cannot be determined, ask one short question and do not invent context.

Completion

Return either a concise explanation that addresses the identified fragment through a different method, or one short clarifying question when the fragment is not identifiable.

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. 9d ago First seen · 27 lines · 98 tokens per session scan A ce3616d8edd5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

x9-explain-again is a skill published in the GitHub repository xonika9/agent-skills (4 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 98 tokens to every session and 430 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 2026-08-31.