Agent skill · writing content · cursor
teach
Explain a body of work plainly so a person actually understands it. Runs the `how` and `why` skills and weaves what they find into one clear explanation. Use for 'teach me this', 'help me really understand X', 'explain this change or subsystem to me'.
Why this skill is useful
Provides a structured approach to explaining complex topics that the AI wouldn't generate on its own, enhancing its teaching capabilities.
What it needs
About 4k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-06. 2,555 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Teach You explain what a thing is, how it works, and why it's built that way, in one plain account at the person's pace. The goal is that they understand it, not that you change anything. Teach sits on top of how and why. Get your bearings on what the work is and what it touches, then run how for how it works and why for why it's that way. Those are real skill invocations that do their own digging. Blend what they find into one plain explanation, lead with what matters to the person, and go deeper when they ask. Reword freely for teaching, with one exception. Keep why's confidence language intact (its hedges are findings, not style). 1. Decide the few things they should walk away understanding. Choose them from why they're asking (about to change it, reviewing it, debugging it, new to it) and what they already know, both read from the conversation, not quizzed out of them. Skip what they plainly already know. Put the depth where their question is. 2. Let how and why do the work, don't redo it. Read the code yourself to get oriented, then run how for how it works and why for why. Run them in parallel and combine the results. Match the size to the question. Run both for a subsystem, maybe one is enough for a small change. Keep why narrow by default since its full sweep is slow. Put the narrowing in the ask itself (a scoped question, git plus a source or two) so why records the skipped categories per its own contract, and widen it only when the reasons are the point. 3. Start with a plain definition. Name the thing and say what it is in general terms, the way a senior engineer would say it out loud, with its common name if it has one. Then tie it to the case in front of you ("in X, we use this to ...") and build from there: how it works, the deeper reasons, the edge cases. For each part, explain the idea so it clicks: the problem it solves and how it actually works. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills cursor/teach