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dan_sbl 2 hours ago [-]
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?
setrf 6 minutes ago [-]
I certainly get what makes you feel that the model should have been wise enough to utilize the knowledge in its pretraining, but it seems like the pretraining data gets pretty muddled in later stages.
28 minutes ago [-]
Planktonne 2 hours ago [-]
This is cruft [1]. No one who is capable of using this needs it--it's a line in the prompt at most.
I have yet to see an "agent skill" that does not match this description.
skissane 54 minutes ago [-]
How I use skills:
- Create a skill to perform some common task
- Watch the agent use it
- Wait until the agent makes a mistake
- Ask it to update the skill to warn it against making that mistake again
I think that, using that iterative process, I end up with something better than just asking it to perform the task plainly
One observation: ask an LLM to write a skill, it tends to make them overly verbose and prescriptive. Often, something briefer and human-written actually works better
Another: I generally let the LLM propose edits to the skill, but I review them carefully and often modify them, because I find it has a tendency to solve the current problem at the price of worsening the solution to a previous one
baby_souffle 42 minutes ago [-]
> - Ask it to update the skill to warn it against making that mistake again
Yep! I have a canned prompt that basically boils down to "scroll up, read through and give me the top `n` things that were difficult..." and more often than not a small skill or change to `agents.md` comes out of that.
mightybyte 34 minutes ago [-]
Oh, skills are absolutely useful for giving the LLM distilled knowledge of things that it doesn't just know ("off the top of its head" so to speak). For example, a company's coding style guide is something that could be very useful to express as a skill.
hedgehog 1 hours ago [-]
They are useful for packaging all the related bits together. Some instructions on the line to add to the main prompt, detailed policy doc that spells out details, troubleshooting docs, the code itself, etc.
QuercusMax 12 minutes ago [-]
Also skills can often include helper scripts or other binaries which the agent can use to do things it couldn't otherwise.
Seems to be doing too much, a 1 line in the system prompt is all you need. And it works well enough.
“Output tokens are precious, be succinct in your responses. Use ASD-STE100 simplified technical english”
ericpauley 21 minutes ago [-]
Cruft complaints aside, what are people actually doing about this? Claude's prose output is becoming incomprehensible as its coding skill increases, and the concepts it needs to express are becoming more complex as it can handle more complex tasks.
bayesnet 3 hours ago [-]
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.
mcintyre1994 3 hours ago [-]
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)
bcrosby95 1 hours ago [-]
The problem with at least ChatGPT is no matter what personality you set it still reads like a smug asshole trying to sound smart. You can just pick different flavors of smug asshole.
gchamonlive 3 hours ago [-]
The readme looks to me concise and correct. Tested it and it works. Better than many human-written readmes I've seen around.
gregsadetsky 52 minutes ago [-]
Does anyone know why ASD-STE100 is having a moment right now? Viral tweet?
I heard about it from a friend, and posted its "spec" here a few days ago:
Ironically?, you're not allowed to copy from the pdf (yes, trivially defeatable - but why).
I guess we'd need a linter (ruff, but for English) that gates whether you're using any non-ASD-STE100 word? Otherwise, yeah, any agent will almost certainly forget this (one line) instruction.
How is that ambiguous? The best interpretation I can find where "test" is a verb is an elision: Test [that] B is an alternative to test A. That is an unlikely reading: "test" is a verb in the first instance and a noun in the second, breaking parallelism. And it's just a very unlikely thing to direct someone to do.
boardwaalk 59 minutes ago [-]
the problem I’ve found with these things is that models drift immediately.
if it’s not a git commit hook that runs over docs and comments and commit messages objectively it’s probably useless.
which I might try.
Claude is so friggin wordy and has no idea how place comments iff they actually matter.
This video benchmarks slop-style indicators with different skill/prompt solutions including the STE skill vs. George Orwell's six rules of writing prompt: Orwell came out on top overall.
Additional bonus: it doesn't add much more tokens to input context. I have compared prose prompts with these rules and without and I am liking the results.
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
alehlopeh 2 hours ago [-]
No semicolons — write two sentences.
Oh lord.
jpease 2 hours ago [-]
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.
hankbond 4 hours ago [-]
["Skill", "Force"]
Pick one.
CGMthrowaway 3 hours ago [-]
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"
dawnerd 59 minutes ago [-]
TIL There's a spec for how I normally communicate instructions at work.
handfuloflight 5 hours ago [-]
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.
harshreality 3 hours ago [-]
The example is unambiguous. Your modification is ambiguous at best. <failure to ensure aws credentials are correct> != <aws credentials are incorrect>
3 hours ago [-]
qznc 3 hours ago [-]
Violates rule 4.2: Do not omit words or use contractions to shorten sentences. Keep articles, keep "that".
stavros 3 hours ago [-]
No, how is that better?
30 minutes ago [-]
trhway 3 hours ago [-]
Which one would do better in a college essay? I think the original one, and it has higher word count.
dghlsakjg 48 minutes ago [-]
The actual STE standard would score horrendously in a college essay. STE encourages simplification and tons of repetition of words that is discouraged by college professors. It is designed to be clear technical writing for people with a loose grasp of English. College writing encourages complex sentence structure, varied word choice for the same concept and other things that make the writing more interesting at the expense of clarity.
alansaber 2 hours ago [-]
The irony of vibing a de-sloppinator
SoMomentary 3 hours ago [-]
Anyone tried this as an output style and not just as a skill?
nevi-me 2 hours ago [-]
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.
dylan9n 1 hours ago [-]
Didnt use it on the readme for the repo
codingjoe 3 hours ago [-]
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
asdf88990 54 minutes ago [-]
Nothing is more comical than AI Slope declaring that I kill AI slop:
> your AI writes like a LinkedIn post. make it write like a Boeing manual.
> An agent skill that forces LLMs to write docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English:
the controlled language aerospace has used since 1983 so a tired mechanic cannot misread an instruction.
AI slop dies as a side effect.
cesarvarela 2 hours ago [-]
Man, I was just now imploring Claude to be more concise.
grim_io 3 hours ago [-]
I wish this were selectable as the default output style.
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.
cryo32 2 hours ago [-]
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.
evanjrowley 4 hours ago [-]
Honestly I should use this on my own emails and slack messages.
bbg2401 4 hours ago [-]
Oh, is ASD-STE100 this week’s mindless productivity/AI-bro trend?
New models (especially Opus 5, released just last week) produces unintelligible output, so people are trying to fix it.
gck1 2 hours ago [-]
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.
brap 49 minutes ago [-]
I tried letting Fable have a few passes at my docs (ultracode) and the output was basically unreadable. Nothing a human would ever write.
I wonder if limiting them to a certain style like STE upfront would make them perform better/worse vs. applying the style after they’re done.
nimonian 33 minutes ago [-]
Both. Command the author to use the style, then command a reviewer to check it. Write one skill called review-prose with your rules, and another called write prose which tells the author they will be judged by review-prose, so you only write the rules once.
What I have found is that getting a model to rewrite a badly written passage is hard, because it seems to key off what it reads. It might swap some vocabulary around ok, but it doesn't fix structures very well. So getting it close to the preferred style in the first place is better.
To take this further, if you must fix existing bad prose, write a clean-prose skill which extracts the bare structure of the prose with none of the style, hands it to an author subagent who isn't poisoned with the original bad prose, then hands the output to a reviewer subagent.
Opus 5 writing is horrendous, so I have been experimenting with improving the output!
UqWBcuFx6NV4r 3 hours ago [-]
What’s it like to be this abrasive about people simply doing things?
bbg2401 2 hours ago [-]
It would be nice if people were indeed doing things.
However, asking Claude to write a skill encoding ASD-STE100 after seeing it pop-up in your social feed is not doing much at all. It's certainly not worth a post on HN.
Having said that, this skill might have been the seed for the flurry of low-effort posts on the subject on various platforms this week. If that's the case, I take back the majority of my scorn.
You'll have to excuse me for becoming jaded by the diminishing levels of visible effort put into projects and products shared on here.
mastodon_acc 2 hours ago [-]
Not everyone spends their time browsing hackernews or other forums all day.
This is the first time I’m hearing about this, I think it’s nifty, and it’s precisely why I come to hackernews at least once a day.
Also what is wrong with using Claude to make a more polished post about something that’s being talked about already?
wonnage 1 hours ago [-]
This is actually completely useless slop and any illusion of usefulness is misguided
mastodon_acc 31 minutes ago [-]
Based on what? I wouldn’t have learned about ASD-STE100 if I hadn’t stumbled upon this post. I’m not even going to use the linked GitHub project, just mentioning ASD-STE100 spec in certain prompts makes them useful.
05980380443 23 minutes ago [-]
Since your claim that adhering to a proven style guide is useless slop is not itself useless slop, I am looking forward to your empirical evidence or formal proof that there is no benefit to using it.
tonyarkles 3 hours ago [-]
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!
> 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?
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thinking-quickly-dave-constru...
- Create a skill to perform some common task
- Watch the agent use it
- Wait until the agent makes a mistake
- Ask it to update the skill to warn it against making that mistake again
I think that, using that iterative process, I end up with something better than just asking it to perform the task plainly
One observation: ask an LLM to write a skill, it tends to make them overly verbose and prescriptive. Often, something briefer and human-written actually works better
Another: I generally let the LLM propose edits to the skill, but I review them carefully and often modify them, because I find it has a tendency to solve the current problem at the price of worsening the solution to a previous one
Yep! I have a canned prompt that basically boils down to "scroll up, read through and give me the top `n` things that were difficult..." and more often than not a small skill or change to `agents.md` comes out of that.
Tends to produce relatively well structured prose that’s easy to edit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English#M...
“Output tokens are precious, be succinct in your responses. Use ASD-STE100 simplified technical english”
Not really a promising tell for a writing skill, IMO.
> 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)
I heard about it from a friend, and posted its "spec" here a few days ago:
https://asd-web-be-prod.azurewebsites.net/media/wunhmi5y/asd...
Ironically?, you're not allowed to copy from the pdf (yes, trivially defeatable - but why).
I guess we'd need a linter (ruff, but for English) that gates whether you're using any non-ASD-STE100 word? Otherwise, yeah, any agent will almost certainly forget this (one line) instruction.
https://x.com/geogristle/status/2078492579511906771
> "Test" is an approved noun, but not an approved verb.
> STE: Test B is an alternative to test A.
So much for clear - unless you know the STE specific rule, the sentence is unambiguously ambiguous.
Direct access btw since the official site gates downloads with a Google form: https://www.asd-ste100.org/assets/files/ASD-STE100_ISSUE9.pd...
Claude is so friggin wordy and has no idea how place comments iff they actually matter.
This video benchmarks slop-style indicators with different skill/prompt solutions including the STE skill vs. George Orwell's six rules of writing prompt: Orwell came out on top overall.
Additional bonus: it doesn't add much more tokens to input context. I have compared prose prompts with these rules and without and I am liking the results.
Oh lord.
But did lead to me finding https://vale.sh and its various available linters. Might give that a try.
Pick one.
"Agent Skill to Enforce ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English in Documents"
> 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.
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.
And I agree, maybe I should use this for my emails too
> your AI writes like a LinkedIn post. make it write like a Boeing manual.
> An agent skill that forces LLMs to write docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English: the controlled language aerospace has used since 1983 so a tired mechanic cannot misread an instruction. AI slop dies as a side effect.
https://github.com/woosal1337/blog/tree/main/videos/ep01-the...
> AI slop dies as a side effect
> One folder, no dependencies, MIT.
Smells like today. I’ll take goose shit over this.
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
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.
I wonder if limiting them to a certain style like STE upfront would make them perform better/worse vs. applying the style after they’re done.
What I have found is that getting a model to rewrite a badly written passage is hard, because it seems to key off what it reads. It might swap some vocabulary around ok, but it doesn't fix structures very well. So getting it close to the preferred style in the first place is better.
To take this further, if you must fix existing bad prose, write a clean-prose skill which extracts the bare structure of the prose with none of the style, hands it to an author subagent who isn't poisoned with the original bad prose, then hands the output to a reviewer subagent.
Opus 5 writing is horrendous, so I have been experimenting with improving the output!
However, asking Claude to write a skill encoding ASD-STE100 after seeing it pop-up in your social feed is not doing much at all. It's certainly not worth a post on HN.
Having said that, this skill might have been the seed for the flurry of low-effort posts on the subject on various platforms this week. If that's the case, I take back the majority of my scorn.
You'll have to excuse me for becoming jaded by the diminishing levels of visible effort put into projects and products shared on here.
This is the first time I’m hearing about this, I think it’s nifty, and it’s precisely why I come to hackernews at least once a day.
Also what is wrong with using Claude to make a more polished post about something that’s being talked about already?