Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English

This is cruft [1]. No one who is capable of using this needs it--it's a line in the prompt at most.

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thinking-quickly-dave-constru...

I took one of the examples ("Leveraging sqlpipe's robust...") and just prefixed it with this:

> Rewrite this using ASD-STE100 simplified technical English:

And you get a good-enough result, it seems? Maybe add another sentence or two for guidance, but what's with needing these giant skills, when ASD-STE100 was surely in the training material?

On a related note I wrote a skill to apply the economist style guide to LLM generated writing https://github.com/TAJD/economist-style-guide-plugin

Tends to produce relatively well structured prose that’s easy to edit.

It’s ironic that the README has all the tells of being LLM-written: > 53 numbered rules, 9 sections, written in 1983 by people whose readers die when a sentence is ambiguous. The ones doing the heavy lifting: …

Not really a promising tell for a writing skill, IMO.

I like the idea, but not sold on the skill.

But did lead to me finding https://vale.sh and its various available linters. Might give that a try.

The irony of vibing a de-sloppinator

Man, I was just now imploring Claude to be more concise.

Okay here's one of the outputs:

> Before you start, make sure that your AWS credentials are correct. If they are not, S3 rejects the upload with a permission error.

Wouldn't it be better to write:

Before start, ensure AWS credentials are correct. Otherwise, S3 rejects uploads with permission error.

["Skill", "Force"]

Pick one.

No semicolons — write two sentences.

Oh lord.

Anyone tried this as an output style and not just as a skill?

Also from a nicely explained YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJblcC4lKYw " The cure for AI slop is a 1986 aircraft manual"

https://github.com/woosal1337/blog/tree/main/videos/ep01-the...

What a wonderful skill. I hate the long and verbose do strings or docs LLMs spit out. This will make a great addition to my docu agent.

And I agree, maybe I should use this for my emails too

The very first sections of the README having obvious claude-isms is not very reassuring:

> AI slop dies as a side effect

> One folder, no dependencies, MIT.

I wish this were selectable as the default output style.

The day I have to negotiate and persuade the machine to stop talking shit rather than command it is the day I decide fuck it and go and farm geese or something.

Smells like today. I’ll take goose shit over this.

Honestly I should use this on my own emails and slack messages.

Oh, is ASD-STE100 this week’s mindless productivity/AI-bro trend?

Ads-STE100: Simplified Technical English - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101215

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English for LLMs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49065956

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49075687

Show HN: Claude Skill for ASD-STE100 – Simplified English - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49108318

nice :-) i'll try that! thx

This is cruft [1]. No one who is capable of using this needs it--it's a line in the prompt at most.

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thinking-quickly-dave-constru...

Also from a nicely explained YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJblcC4lKYw " The cure for AI slop is a 1986 aircraft manual"

https://github.com/woosal1337/blog/tree/main/videos/ep01-the...

Man, I was just now imploring Claude to be more concise.

What a wonderful skill. I hate the long and verbose do strings or docs LLMs spit out. This will make a great addition to my docu agent.

And I agree, maybe I should use this for my emails too

I took one of the examples ("Leveraging sqlpipe's robust...") and just prefixed it with this:

> Rewrite this using ASD-STE100 simplified technical English:

And you get a good-enough result, it seems? Maybe add another sentence or two for guidance, but what's with needing these giant skills, when ASD-STE100 was surely in the training material?

Honestly I should use this on my own emails and slack messages.

I wish this were selectable as the default output style.

No semicolons — write two sentences.

Oh lord.

The irony of vibing a de-sloppinator

On a related note I wrote a skill to apply the economist style guide to LLM generated writing https://github.com/TAJD/economist-style-guide-plugin

Tends to produce relatively well structured prose that’s easy to edit.

The very first sections of the README having obvious claude-isms is not very reassuring:

> AI slop dies as a side effect

> One folder, no dependencies, MIT.

I like the idea, but not sold on the skill.

But did lead to me finding https://vale.sh and its various available linters. Might give that a try.

Not really a promising tell for a writing skill, IMO.

The readme looks to me concise and correct. Tested it and it works. Better than many human-written readmes I've seen around.

They acknowledge this, but I really dislike whatever style they're using for the readme:

> Yes, this README breaks half of them. Marketing is explicitly out of STE scope. The skill knows that and stays in the docs.

> Where it refuses to go: marketing copy, blog voice, brand writing. Flat on purpose.

(Each sentence there has an emoji that HN cuts out)

Okay here's one of the outputs:

> Before you start, make sure that your AWS credentials are correct. If they are not, S3 rejects the upload with a permission error.

Wouldn't it be better to write:

Before start, ensure AWS credentials are correct. Otherwise, S3 rejects uploads with permission error.

The example is unambiguous. Your modification is ambiguous at best. <failure to ensure aws credentials are correct> != <aws credentials are incorrect>

Violates rule 4.2: Do not omit words or use contractions to shorten sentences. Keep articles, keep "that".

No, how is that better?

Which one would do better in a college essay? I think the original one, and it has higher word count.

Anyone tried this as an output style and not just as a skill?

["Skill", "Force"]

Pick one.

The day I have to negotiate and persuade the machine to stop talking shit rather than command it is the day I decide fuck it and go and farm geese or something.

Smells like today. I’ll take goose shit over this.

nice :-) i'll try that! thx

I've added the prompt to use the ASD English, on my CLAUDE.md when I learnt of the standard. The generated output is more tolerable to read, and is less confusing.

I like it, and I'll also try the Economist one on another thread here. I have global instructions on how Claude should try to write things like I do.

I generally avoid having lots of skills, security risk as I won't vet them all.

Here is the revised post title that follows ASD‑STE100 Simplified Technical English rules:

"Agent Skill to Enforce ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English in Documents"

Oh, is ASD-STE100 this week’s mindless productivity/AI-bro trend?

Ads-STE100: Simplified Technical English - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49101215

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English for LLMs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49065956

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49075687

Show HN: Claude Skill for ASD-STE100 – Simplified English - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49108318

Recent-ish models learned to use the same trick engineers played on non-engineers, where they try to sound very smart by overcomplicating very simple concepts.

It's very taxing, especially since these are usually multi-paragraph texts. I noticed I've started doing a lot of "hey, you're talking gibberish again" a lot with 5.6 Sol.

New models (especially Opus 5, released just last week) produces unintelligible output, so people are trying to fix it.

What’s it like to be this abrasive about people simply doing things?

You didn’t link to it but I looked back at my very few submissions and realized that I had posted it in 2019. I thought it sounded familiar!