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Omnibus
200 skills · 1230 min
Omnibus
Skill 160 of 200
Write English that a reader cannot misread: one meaning per word, active voice, simple tenses, one idea per sentence, short sentences.
3 minutes · 630 words · 5 sections
Install
npx skills add PostHog/skills --skill writing-simplified-technical-englishnpx skills add PostHog/skills/plugin marketplace add PostHog/skillsThe first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.
ASD-STE100 is a controlled-language standard. The aerospace and defense industry wrote it so that a technician cannot misread a maintenance instruction. It removes the two biggest sources of misreading: words that carry more than one meaning, and sentences that support more than one structure.
The same discipline fixes the usual failure of agent-written prose. Agent output is often correct and unreadable: long sentences, stacked hedges, passive voice, and a synonym rotation that makes one action look like three. The reader has no author to ask, so ambiguity costs them a re-read at best and a wrong action at worst.
Apply the rules below as you write. Do not write a dense draft and clean it up afterward.
Use it for text that a person or another agent must act on:
Do not use it where voice is the point: marketing copy, blog posts, or anything persuasive. STE is deliberately flat. Also leave quoted text alone. If you quote a user, a log, or a document, quote it as it is.
| Rule | Do | Do not |
|---|---|---|
| One meaning per word | Pick one verb per action and reuse it every time | Rotate “check”, “verify”, and “confirm” for the same action |
| One part of speech per word | “Apply oil to the valve” | “Oil the valve” |
| Active voice | “The worker deletes the file.” | “The file is deleted.” |
| Simple tenses | “We received the report.” | “We have received the report.” |
| One idea per sentence | “Open the file. Read line 3.” | “Open the file and read line 3, then check it matches.” |
| Sentence length | 20 words or fewer for instructions, 25 or fewer for descriptions | Chains of subordinate clauses |
| Noun clusters | 3 words or fewer (“fuel pump valve”) | “high pressure fuel pump inlet valve assembly” |
| No missing words | Keep the subject, the verb, and the article, even if it reads longer | “Files not backed up will be lost”, which hides which files |
| One hedge, at most | “The client version is probably out of date.” | “An error may have occurred which could be caused by…” |
| Paragraphs | One topic, 6 sentences or fewer | Multi-topic paragraphs |
| Lists | Use a list for 3 or more steps or conditions | A sequence buried in one sentence |
| Jargon | Keep the technical term you need, and define it once | Use an internal name the reader has never seen |
PostHog house style sits on top of these rules and wins where the two disagree. We use American English, sentence case, and the Oxford comma. We do not use the em-dash.
Precision beats brevity. If a shorter sentence would drop a safety condition, a scope qualifier, or a number, keep the longer sentence and say why.
If the text already follows the rules, say so. Do not change compliant text.
Before you send the text, read it once and ask:
references/writing-rules.md: the detail behind the table, plus sources.references/before-after.md: worked examples of the rewrite, including agent output.Write English that a reader cannot misread: one meaning per word, active voice, simple tenses, one idea per sentence, short sentences. Based on ASD-STE100 (Simplified Technical English), the controlled-language standard written for aircraft maintenance manuals. Use it for any prose an agent produces that someone else acts on. That covers reports and findings, PR descriptions and commit messages, instructions handed to another agent, tool descriptions, error messages, status summaries, and prompts. Also use it on request, with triggers like "simplify this", "make this readable", "too dense", "rewrite in STE", "simplified technical english", "ASD-STE100".
The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.
main, last pushed 24 September 2026.SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 2 distinct layouts observed: skills/omnibus/*/SKILL.md, skills/posthog/all/skills/*/SKILL.md.h1 and no skipped levels:.claude-plugin/marketplace.json by PostHog, declaring 6 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree./PostHog/skills.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.2 files · 7 KB
Everything this skill ships beside its prose. All of it is set here, as subchapters of skill 160.
Documentation the agent loads on demand, rather than up front.