Explainer
Ask how something works, and get the explanation that costs you the least effort: usually a short answer in precise, plain prose, built from first principles; a diagram, an interactive page, or a narrated animation when the structure needs one. Every artifact is checked against a small model of the subject, for what it leaves out and for what it says that you did not need.
Inspired by Andrej Karpathy's post on the ladder from STE-style writing to diagrams, HTML, and 3b1b-style explainer videos.
One model, four renderings
Every rendering of softmax temperature is compiled from one model.md. The terms and the numbers are the same in each one. Normal routing would stop at Stage 3; this folder renders all four to show that they agree.
┌─ 1 · controlled prose
question -> model -> narrative ─┼─ 2 · diagram
probe cold read ├─ 3 · interactive page
└─ 4 · animated video
then: check · review sheet · cold read · blind test
Controlled prose
The procedure in numbered steps, the ratio law, a worked table, and the limits. Written in STE-80.
Stage 2 · diagramDiagrams
Where T acts in one decoding step, three distributions side by side, the causal chain, the limit states.
Stage 3 · interactiveInteractive page
Move T and watch the bars, the pipeline table, and the ratio. Draw samples. Test shift invariance.
Stage 4 · videoNarrated video
One tracker drives every object: dots move on the z/T line while the bars sharpen and flatten.
Checked in both directions
An explanation costs the reader effort in two ways: what it leaves out, and what it says that the reader did not need. A fresh agent reads every published explainer cold, as its stated audience, and reports both. explainer check holds every number to the model and every rendering to a length budget. In chat, the same principles give shorter, better answers. explainer eval chat graded six answers about phenomena blind (score out of 10; unneeded passages per answer):
| Principles | Score | Words | Unneeded |
|---|---|---|---|
| none | 6.3 | 399 | 4.7 |
| v0.5.0 | 7.2 | 544 | 5.0 |
| current | 7.8 | 292 | 1.5 |
The cold reads also found real errors: a Dijkstra argument that said "reaching D costs at least ten" seconds before D became eight, and a git bisect remedy that could not find the bug it was meant to find. Evals · Concepts
Videos
Three videos stop where a learner should predict first: commit a guess, then the video continues. The chapter buttons jump to each pause.
Narration and animation stay in sync through bookmarks in the script. The local voice service synthesizes each bookmark segment separately, so every bookmark time is exact, with no Whisper pass.
The simplest medium that keeps the structure
| Stage | Use when the subject is mainly… | Escalate when… |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · prose | a procedure, a definition, an argument | — |
| 2 · diagram | topology, flow, architecture | the reader must hold three or more relationships at once |
| 3 · interactive | a parameter, scenarios, drill-down | the reader must explore states or alternatives |
| 4 · video | a transformation over time | understanding depends on seeing state A become state B |
Find the commit that introduced a bug
git bisect is a linear procedure with one loop. Numbered steps carry all of it, so the router stops here.
What git stores when you commit
Blobs, trees, commits, and refs are pure topology. Nothing moves and nothing is tuned, so one diagram is enough.
Why a CDN makes a request faster
Two distances and a cache state set the answer. Predict the no-CDN time, then compare three paths side by side.
Why the sky is blue, and the setting Sun red
A phenomenon from first principles: scattered power goes with the electron's acceleration squared, so blue scatters 5.86 times more than red. 650 words, by budget.
How a higher interest rate lowers inflation
Switch the assumptions economists disagree about (anchored expectations, the cost channel, the neo-Fisherian view) and watch output and inflation over 16 quarters.
How self-attention works
One token, four levels. Remove one part at a time (content weights, a separate query, √d, the mask) and see what breaks.
Install
/plugin marketplace add ifrit98/Explainer # in Claude Code /plugin install explainer@explainer /explainer:explain how does a bloom filter work /explainer:video why the derivative of sin is cos /explainer:verify bloom-filter # model check, review sheet, blind test
Video also needs brew install uv cairo pango pkgconf ffmpeg and a one-time explainer setup for the local voice.