TIL There's a spec for how I normally communicate instructions at work.
Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
51–60 of 139 posts
Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
#52the problem I’ve found with these things is that models drift immediately.
if it’s not a git commit hook that runs over docs and comments and commit messages objectively it’s probably useless.
which I might try.
Claude is so friggin wordy and has no idea how place comments iff they actually matter.
Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
#53Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
#54Nothing is more comical than AI Slope declaring that I kill AI slop:
> your AI writes like a LinkedIn post. make it write like a Boeing manual.
> An agent skill that forces LLMs to write docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English: the controlled language aerospace has used since 1983 so a tired mechanic cannot misread an instruction. AI slop dies as a side effect.
Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
#55This 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...
I have yet to see an "agent skill" that does not match this description.
How I use skills:
- Create a skill to perform some common task
- Watch the agent use it
- Wait until the agent makes a mistake
- Ask it to update the skill to warn it against making that mistake again
I think that, using that iterative process, I end up with something better than just asking it to perform the task plainly
One observation: ask an LLM to write a skill, it tends to make them overly verbose and prescriptive. Often, something briefer and human-written actually works better
Another: I generally let the LLM propose edits to the skill, but I review them carefully and often modify them, because I find it has a tendency to solve the current problem at the price of worsening the solution to a previous one
Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
#56Gotta love how the very first example in Issue 9 of the standard is already self-defeating: > "Test" is an approved noun, but not an approved verb. > STE: Test B is an alternative to test A. So much for clear - unless you know the STE specific rule, the sentence is unambiguously ambiguous. Direct access btw since the official site gates downloads with a Google form: https://www.asd-ste100.org/assets/files/ASD-STE100_…
How is that ambiguous? The best interpretation I can find where "test" is a verb is an elision: Test [that] B is an alternative to test A. That is an unlikely reading: "test" is a verb in the first instance and a noun in the second, breaking parallelism. And it's just a very unlikely thing to direct someone to do.
Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
#57Does anyone know why ASD-STE100 is having a moment right now? Viral tweet?
I heard about it from a friend, and posted its "spec" here a few days ago:
https://asd-web-be-prod.azurewebsites.net/media/wunhmi5y/asd...
Ironically?, you're not allowed to copy from the pdf (yes, trivially defeatable - but why).
I guess we'd need a linter (ruff, but for English) that gates whether you're using any non-ASD-STE100 word? Otherwise, yeah, any agent will almost certainly forget this (one line) instruction.
Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
#58Oh, 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.y…
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.
I tried letting Fable have a few passes at my docs (ultracode) and the output was basically unreadable. Nothing a human would ever write.
I wonder if limiting them to a certain style like STE upfront would make them perform better/worse vs. applying the style after they’re done.
Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
#59Okay 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.
Which one would do better in a college essay? I think the original one, and it has higher word count.
The actual STE standard would score horrendously in a college essay. STE encourages simplification and tons of repetition of words that is discouraged by college professors. It is designed to be clear technical writing for people with a loose grasp of English. College writing encourages complex sentence structure, varied word choice for the same concept and other things that make the writing more interesting at the expense of clarity.
Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
#60Does anyone know why ASD-STE100 is having a moment right now? Viral tweet? I heard about it from a friend, and posted its "spec" here a few days ago: https://asd-web-be-prod.azurewebsites.net/media/wunhmi5y/asd... Ironically?, you're not allowed to copy from the pdf (yes, trivially defeatable - but why). I guess we'd need a linter (ruff, but for English) that gates whether you're using any non-ASD-STE100 word? Otherw…
Yea, viral tweet