21 comments

  • Planktonne 11 minutes ago
    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...

  • dan_sbl 46 minutes 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?

  • tajd 1 hour ago
    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.

  • bayesnet 1 hour 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.

    • gchamonlive 59 minutes ago
      The readme looks to me concise and correct. Tested it and it works. Better than many human-written readmes I've seen around.
    • mcintyre1994 54 minutes 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)

  • jpease 30 minutes 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.

  • alansaber 5 minutes ago
    The irony of vibing a de-sloppinator
  • cesarvarela 10 minutes ago
    Man, I was just now imploring Claude to be more concise.
  • handfuloflight 3 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 1 hour ago
      The example is unambiguous. Your modification is ambiguous at best. <failure to ensure aws credentials are correct> != <aws credentials are incorrect>
    • qznc 1 hour ago
      Violates rule 4.2: Do not omit words or use contractions to shorten sentences. Keep articles, keep "that".
    • stavros 1 hour ago
      No, how is that better?
    • trhway 1 hour ago
      Which one would do better in a college essay? I think the original one, and it has higher word count.
  • hankbond 1 hour ago
    ["Skill", "Force"]

    Pick one.

    • CGMthrowaway 1 hour 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"

  • alehlopeh 43 minutes ago
    No semicolons — write two sentences.

    Oh lord.

  • z3ugma 15 minutes ago
    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...

  • SoMomentary 56 minutes ago
    Anyone tried this as an output style and not just as a skill?
    • nevi-me 25 minutes 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.

  • ricardobeat 19 minutes ago
    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.

  • codingjoe 1 hour 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

  • grim_io 1 hour ago
    I wish this were selectable as the default output style.
  • cryo32 34 minutes 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 2 hours ago
    Honestly I should use this on my own emails and slack messages.
  • bbg2401 2 hours ago
    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

    • gck1 4 minutes 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.

    • xlii 1 hour ago
      New models (especially Opus 5, released just last week) produces unintelligible output, so people are trying to fix it.
    • UqWBcuFx6NV4r 1 hour ago
      What’s it like to be this abrasive about people simply doing things?
      • bbg2401 22 minutes 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.

    • tonyarkles 1 hour 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!
    • toomuchtodo 44 minutes ago
  • dahdum 1 hour ago
    [dead]
  • nikolahristov 1 hour ago
    [dead]
  • Merkur 3 hours ago
    nice :-) i'll try that! thx