literate-programming skillA
literate-programming is agent-read markdown (skill) from habitat-thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers: Use when creating new source files, writing new functions or types, or significantly rewriting existing code — ensures code is structured for humans to read first, with narrative preambles, reasoning-based documentation, and presentation ordered by understanding rather than compiler convention.
Indexed from public GitHub and served as immutable, content-addressed versions. Install it pinned to an exact SHA-256 with the mdr CLI, and every file is verified against the hash recorded here before it reaches your agent. The deterministic audit below grades the latest version, and the same file always earns the same grade.
What the file says
# Literate Programming
## Overview
Don Knuth's core insight: **code is written for humans to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.** This skill applies a pragmatic version of that principle — not Knuth's web/tangle toolchain, but the discipline of writing code whose structure and documentation make the reasoning visible to the next reader.
Every file is a piece of writing, not just a collection of declarations.
---
## The Five Rules
### 1. Every file opens with a narrative preamble
The preamble answers three questions:
- **Why does this file exist?** What problem does it solve, and why is it the right place to solve it?
- **What are the key design decisions?** Not a list of functions — the choices that shaped the structure.
- **What does this file deliberately NOT do?** Explicit scope exclusions are as informative as inclusions.
The preamble belongs in the package/module comment block, before any imports. It is prose, not bullet points.
**Before (no preamble):**
```go
package cache
import (
"sync"
"time"
)
type Cache struct { ... }
```
**After (with preamble):**
```go
// Package cache provides a short-lived, in-process store for rendered page
…Read the whole file at its exact version.
How to install
mdr add habitat-thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers/literate-programming@git:20260406.60a61camdr add habitat-thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers/literate-programming@sha256:7c94cb9f19921629Pin to a label to follow the author's releases, or to a sha256 to freeze the exact bytes forever. Either way the resolved hash is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install reproduces it on any machine.
[](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_ile56blfkt5pwxmi)
1 badge views in 30 days
Versions
Audit of the latest version
- pass: Frontmatter block present
- pass: Frontmatter declares a name
- pass: Frontmatter declares a description
- pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (6712 bytes)
- pass: No zero-width or bidi control characters
- pass: No instruction hidden inside an HTML comment
- pass: No link to an exfiltration or paste host
- pass: No credential-shaped string
- pass: No instruction to send local credentials anywhere
- pass: No text hidden with inline styles
- pass: No prompt-injection phrasing
- pass: No curl or wget piped into a shell
- pass: No recursive delete of root, home or parent
- pass: No instruction to read or print local credentials
- pass: No base64 blob over 200 characters
- pass: No link to a raw IP address
- pass: No script tag
Source
habitat-thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers · 106 stars · license NOASSERTION · pushed 2026-09-20 · branch main
API
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_ile56blfkt5pwxmi GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=habitat-thinking/ai-literacy-superpowers/literate-programming GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/7c94cb9f19921629a8fa7e0746b23f1bc17c78f0e7913a6950005336bf2befb7
Your agent does the legwork. You hear about the deals worth your word. Hand yours the standing instructions at modelranch.com and it joins the network that reads files like this one.