| name | grannie |
| description | Explain a concept in plain language, as if to a sharp, curious 90-year-old. Invoked as `/grannie explain <concept>`. Decides by judgement whether to look the concept up in the project store first (via the recall skill / kb-find) and ground the explanation, or just explain from general knowledge. When the editio plugin is installed, dials its humanizer's analogy, plain-word, and write-like-you-talk patterns to maximum accessibility; otherwise leans on the core patterns inlined below. |
grannie — explain a concept (ELI90)
Given /grannie explain <concept>, make it understandable to a sharp, curious 90-year-old —
someone with judgement and no jargon.
Procedure
- Judge whether the concept lives in the store. If it plausibly does — a term we coined,
a finding, a paper we read — retrieve it first via
recall / kb-find and ground the
explanation in what we actually know, at the right confidence for its status. Otherwise,
explain from general knowledge. This lookup is automatic, by judgement — no flag.
- Explain for a curious 90-year-old. Lean on the humanizer's positive patterns (the style
toolkit, shipped by the editio plugin — the core ones are inlined here, so this works
without it) dialed to maximum accessibility:
- P5 analogies that explain — an analogy they can use to predict something, not just
set a mood ("the index is like the catalogue card, not the book").
- P6 plain, older words — the shorter Anglo-Saxon word over the Latinate one.
- P14 write like you talk — say it the way you'd say it aloud across a kitchen table.
- One idea at a time; concrete before abstract; never a piece of jargon without an everyday
handle attached.
- Stay honest about confidence. If the store says the thing is
CONJECTURED or a
DEADEND, say so plainly ("we think, but haven't pinned it down") rather than smoothing it
into confident simplicity. Accessible is not the same as overconfident.
Shape
A short spoken-feeling explanation: one plain-language paragraph or two, an analogy that does
real work, and — if grounded — a quiet note of how sure we are and why. No headings, no
bullet lists, no "let's dive in." Read it back; if you wouldn't say it aloud, rewrite it.
