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explain skillA

Name: explain
Author: teambrilliant

explain is agent-read markdown (skill) from teambrilliant/dev-skills: Explain a plan, a shape, a shipped change, code, or the last message so it's impossible to misunderstand — an ASCII drawing of how it works, then plain words, facts kept verbatim. Like SQL's EXPLAIN for a query plan. Use when someone says "explain simply", "use ascii to explain", "explain the plan to me", "that didn't land", "too dense", "I don't get it", "walk me through what we shipped", or needs to understand and defend a system to their team..

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 before it reaches your agent: the main file against the SHA-256 recorded here, the others against the git hashes of its source commit. The deterministic audit below grades the latest version, and the same checks always give the same file the same grade.

What the file says

# Explain

SQL's `EXPLAIN` shows how a query will actually run. This does the same for work: how the thing actually runs, drawn and said so plainly it can't be misread. The goal is that the developer can stand at a whiteboard and explain it — and defend it — without line-level knowledge.

## What to explain

- **`/explain` with no argument, or "that didn't land" / "too dense" / "I don't get it"** → your most recent assistant message. Re-explain it only: no tools, no new information, no answering a new question. If there's no previous message, say there's nothing to explain yet.
- **A file** (`thoughts/shapes/…`, `thoughts/plans/…`) → read it and explain what it will build and how.
- **A shipped change** (branch, PR, "what we just built") → read the diff, the touched code, and the git log. Plans go stale, so explain what the code does now; where it differs from the plan, say so.
- **Anything else** (a module, a flow, an error, a concept) → read what's needed and explain it the same way. The four questions below apply only if it's customer-facing.

## How
…

Read the whole file at its exact version.

How to install

Latest version

mdr add teambrilliant/dev-skills/explain@git:20260927.b9558d0

Exact content

mdr add teambrilliant/dev-skills/explain@sha256:a7ff05d666d1113c

Pin to a label to follow the author's releases, or to a sha256 for exact bytes. Either way the resolved hash is written to mdr.lock, and mdr install fetches those bytes again and checks them, so it installs them exactly or fails.

Badge

[![mdr](https://markdownregistry.com/badge/art_xbi65e5vhbxy2hwo.svg)](https://markdownregistry.com/a/art_xbi65e5vhbxy2hwo)

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Versions

version	committed	commit	size	audit
git:20260927.b9558d0 latest	2026-09-27	b9558d0	4,239 B	A	view

Audit of the latest version

A 17 of 17 checks passed. Deterministic, no model, same answer every run.

pass: Frontmatter block present
pass: Frontmatter declares a name
pass: Frontmatter declares a description
pass: Size between 200 bytes and 200 KB (4239 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

GitHub

teambrilliant/dev-skills · 6 stars · license none · pushed 2026-09-27 · branch main

API

GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/artifacts/art_xbi65e5vhbxy2hwo
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/resolve?ref=teambrilliant/dev-skills/explain
GET https://markdownregistry.com/api/v1/blob/a7ff05d666d1113c43d29e46235111c4f7642106c434f01367f5dcb9c1c51ea5

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.