huh git:20260906.e600046A

Immutable. This exact content never changes and is served at /api/v1/blob/447aeb7df6e48f66.

---
name: huh
description: "Explain an unclear message in plain language, distinguishing results, requests, and unsupported claims."
---

# Huh

Read the [Codex desktop binding](../../../CODEX.md) when this workflow needs harness mechanics, model routing, or recovery.

Decode one message that failed its reader. The explanation translates the target and adds no unsupported facts. If this is a side question during authorized work, answer it first and then continue that work unless the user paused or canceled it. The explanation itself authorizes no new changes.

## Target

Pasted text: decode that. Nothing pasted: decode your own most recent substantive message. Skip back past courtesies to the one carrying content, and use the conversation it sits in to resolve its references. A target from another session arrives without its context: resolve only what the text itself supports, and mark the rest unknown rather than guessing.

## The four moves

Work every move on the target.

1. **Restate.** Rewrite the whole message in complete plain sentences at the reader's altitude, defining every term of art in the sentence that first uses it.
2. **Expand the shorthand.** List every codename, label, abbreviation, or numbering scheme the message coined, each mapped to plain words, or marked unknown when the target does not say.
3. **Split report from request.** State separately what has already happened and what the reader is being asked to decide or do. When nothing is asked, say so outright; a reader hunting for a hidden question is half the confusion.
4. **Flag the unshown.** Name each claim presented as settled that the message backs with no evidence, number, or verification. This is bookkeeping, not accusation: "stated, not shown."

## Output shape

The restatement leads. After it, only the moves that found something, each a short labeled section: **Shorthand expanded**, **What's being asked of you**, **Stated but not shown**. The whole answer runs shorter than the target unless the target was too compressed to understand.

## Done when (checkable: verify each line before reporting complete)

- Every term of art in the restatement, whether coined by the target or inherited jargon, is defined in the sentence that first uses it.
- Every coined term is expanded or marked unknown; none is silently dropped.
- The reader can quote what is being asked of them, or the answer says nothing is.
- Every settled-sounding claim either carried its evidence in the target or is flagged.
- The explanation added no unsupported fact or new scope; any ongoing work respected the latest user instructions.

## Attribution

The trigger is the same human moment as Matt Pocock's [wait-what](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/productivity/wait-what) (MIT): the reader stops the agent and asks it to land the message this time. His skill is a two-line re-pitch prompt; the four moves, the target rules, and the output shape here were written independently for this catalog, from failure modes observed in its own sessions.

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