Anthropic's internal ELI5 skill: explain like I'm five, with HTML visuals
Anthropic has been using an ELI5 Skill internally, triggered by /eli5 <topic>. It instructs the agent to explain a subject to a complete newcomer: avoid jargon, favor one big picture over dense text, and render complex ideas through an HTML artifact. The real payoff, as the post argues, is not simpler wording but forced knowledge restructuring — the agent must establish a mental model before diving into details and edge cases. Borrowed from Reddit's 'explain like I'm five' culture, this is a reusable output constraint for agent prompts, independent of any specific model, and easy to replicate in tools that support slash commands or custom skills. Useful for engineers tuning Claude or other agent output formats.
Anthropic has recently been using an ELI5 Skill quite often.
It's simple to use: /eli5 <topic>
It asks the Agent to:
- Explain as if to someone who knows nothing about the topic;
- Use few technical terms;
- Use big pictures and few words;
- Present complex concepts via an HTML Artifact.
Anthropic 内部最近常用一个 ELI5 Skill。
使用方式很简单： /eli5 <topic>
它会要求 Agent：
1、像给完全不了解的人解释； 2、少用术语； 3、使用大图和少量文字； 4、通过 HTML Artifact 呈现复杂概念。
The value of this Skill isn't just making answers simpler—it forces the Agent to reorganize knowledge: first establish an overall mental model, then explain details and boundaries.
这个 Skill 的价值，不只是把答案写得更简单，而是强制 Agent 重新组织知识：先建立整体认知，再解释细节和边界。
a skill people at Anthropic have been using a lot recently: ELI5 /eli5 <what you want explained> "explain like I'm someone who knows nothing about this topic, using a HTML artifact with big pictures and few words" — @trq212
a skill people at Anthropic have been using a lot recently: ELI5 /eli5 <what you want explained> "explain like I'm someone who knows nothing about this topic, using a HTML artifact with big pictures and few words" — @trq212