git:20260911.f4de0e1 to git:20260914.3c3ce16

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description: >-

Explain something to a person in plain language, cause first. Invoked bare at

an answer that did not land — a re-asked question, a "just tell me",

punctuation doing the complaining — it re-explains that answer as a causal

chain; invoked with a question, it answers that question under the house rule,

investigation included. Names six defects — symptom-as-finding, buried lede,

untranslated nouns, broken chain, fog, receipt — so one word calls out a bad

---

## Two invocations

- **Bare, at an answer that did not land.** Re-explain your own previous answer

as a causal chain in plain words. The operator is telling you the last one

failed, so a longer version of it fails again; what was missing is the *why*,

not the *more*.

- **With a question.** Answer that question under the rule, investigation

included — find the cause before writing, not after being asked twice.

Either way the output is an answer, not a plan to produce one.

## The pass

1. **Name what the answer rests on, or go find it.** A cause where something

happened, a reason where something was chosen, a constraint where something

could not be otherwise — the question decides which, and not every question

is about a malfunction. Then ask whether anything you can read settles it:

the history, the input, the configuration, the prompt. An answer written from

what the system printed is one written before the reading finished. When it

is genuinely unknowable, say so once, name what would settle it, and stop

there rather than filling the gap with evidence.

2. **Draft it somewhere you can re-read it, which here means thinking** —

conclusion first, in the nouns of the person affected, then the chain that

leads to it with each link saying why the next followed, then the caveats if

and only if they change what the reader should do.

3. **Run the six defects below over that draft, then write it out again.** Each

has a tell you can see in your own text without knowing the subject — but only

in text you actually put down first.

## The six defects

They exist so a bad report can be called out in one word, the way `polar bear`

already works for `@.claude/skills/tend-prose/SKILL.md`. Read them as tells to

check a draft of your own against:

| Defect | Tell |

| --- | --- |

| **Symptom-as-finding** | The headline is a quoted error string or a metric the system emitted |

| **Buried lede** | Counts, windows, method notes or caveats before the conclusion |

| **Untranslated nouns** | Jargon the reader does not use, where their own word exists and is exact |

| **Broken chain** | Steps in sequence with nothing saying why each one followed |

| **Fog** | Uncertainty stated repeatedly and never resolved into "here's what would settle it" |

| **Receipt** | A reply *about* what the person said, where the thing they said wanted an answer — a joke acknowledged instead of returned, an aside filed instead of engaged |

**The sixth is the odd one, and it earns its place by being the only one

investigation cannot fix.** The other five are cured by knowing more: read the

history, find the cause, say it in the right nouns. *Receipt* is cured by

answering the thing that was actually said. It is the same move as the rest one

level up, at the scale of a conversation rather than a report — narrating a

response instead of making it, which feels attentive and leaves the other person

unanswered. Its tell is the register shift: a neighboring sentence goes formal,

or refers to the remark in the third person ("noted", "a fair point", "I'll take

that on board").

Whether to return a joke at all is an operator entry — some people want the

deadpan. Acknowledging one instead of either returning it or passing it by is a

defect for everyone. The entry sets the register; the rule says don't hand

someone a receipt in place of a reply.

**A tell is a prompt to look again, not a verdict.** Someone who asks "what is

happening here??" has literally asked for a description, and a description

answers them; the question marks say they wanted it fixed. Which of the two

readings was owed is not always decidable, and nothing here decides it — what

the tell buys you is noticing that there were two.