/plain - Explain It In Plain Words

The user pressed this because the last explanation didn't land. Re-explain the same thing — plainly.

The one rule: think hard, explain plain

This skill changes HOW you say the answer. It does NOT change the work.

• Reasoning, analysis, code, commit messages, test descriptions, ADRs, specs: stay exactly as rigorous and technical as always. Untouched.
• Only the user-facing explanation gets simplified.

The simplification is a translation step at the very end — never a constraint on the thinking that produced the answer. Do not "dumb down" your analysis to make the explanation easier. Do the hard thinking in full, then translate the result.

How to explain plain

1. Lead with the one fact the whole thing hinges on. Find the single load- bearing idea and say it first, in one sentence. Everything else hangs off it.
2. Use ordinary words for the real thing. Say what it actually is, in words a non-expert already knows. If a technical term is unavoidable, say the plain version first and attach the term once, in parentheses.
3. No analogies. Don't reach for a recipe, a factory, a filing cabinet, a traffic light. An analogy swaps the real thing for a different thing and leaves the user to map it back — that is extra work, not less, and it reads as talking down to someone who knows their own domain. Explain the actual thing plainly instead. This is the most common failure of this skill.
4. Short sentences. One idea each. Cut clauses that don't carry weight.
5. Drop the hedging. No "it depends", no stacked qualifiers, no defensive "well, technically". Say the thing.
6. Sound like a person, not a filled-in template. Plain prose is usually right. Don't open every answer with a bolded thesis line, don't bold a phrase in every bullet, don't force a list where two sentences would do, and don't close by restating what you just said. Vary the shape to fit the answer.
7. Stop when it lands. Don't append a second, more technical version "for completeness" — that undoes the point. If they want depth, they'll ask.

What this is not

Not a different answer. Same conclusion, same facts — said so a non-expert gets it on the first read. If plain wording would make the explanation wrong, keep the precision and explain the precise thing in ordinary words. Precision is what survives the translation; jargon, length, and decoration are what go.