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Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English

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Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English

#111

Post by dymk »

aesthesia wrote: post #101
summarity wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Test B is an alternative to test A." could mean there's a Test B and a Test A, and they're interchangeable. Or: You can run Test B to confirm A works, that is "to test A". Again the stated goal to clear documentation for non-native or limited-exposure speakers. This doesn't pass that test.

Ah, I see, taking "to test A" as an infinitive. But it would be strange to say test B is an alternative without saying what it's an alternative to. The other reading still seems quite unlikely.

The point of STE100 is to avoid ambiguity like this, though.

Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English

#115

Post by dymk »

xlii wrote: post #9
bbg2401 wrote: post #5

Oh, 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…

New models (especially Opus 5, released just last week) produces unintelligible output, so people are trying to fix it.

No, it was a viral tweet from last week. They’ve been verbose since GPT-4o.

Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English

#116

Post by danielbarla »

bayesnet wrote: post #17

It’s ironic that the README has all the tells of being LLM-written: > 53 numbered rules, 9 sections, written in 1983 by people whose readers die when a sentence is ambiguous. The ones doing the heavy lifting: … Not really a promising tell for a writing skill, IMO.

I've been using a plain ASD-STE100 prompt for a little bit now, and while I somewhat prefer the text that agents produce while being told to use simplified English, it does not necessarily change the overall structure of what they write. It just now tends to have shorter sentences, and fewer drumroll, pitch-deck / vacuous section titles like "the finding that pivots the preposition", etc. Overall a significant quality increase in my opinion, but nothing earth shattering, and doesn't fully solve the problem.

Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English

#117

Post by thomascountz »

dymk wrote: post #111
aesthesia wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, I see, taking "to test A" as an infinitive. But it would be strange to say test B is an alternative without saying what it's an alternative to. The other reading still seems quite unlikely.

The point of STE100 is to avoid ambiguity like this, though.

The point of STE is to support technical writers who have knowledge of the matter and a style guide. In other words, STE will not make something unambiguous simply by replacing words. The example sentence is just to illustrate a grammar rule: "test" as a verb vs a noun. That is all. You should not assume an STE rule will disambiguate a single sentence pulled out of context.

Re: Agent Skill to Force Docs in ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English

#118

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #24
bayesnet wrote: post #17

It’s ironic that the README has all the tells of being LLM-written: > 53 numbered rules, 9 sections, written in 1983 by people whose readers die when a sentence is ambiguous. The ones doing the heavy lifting: … Not really a promising tell for a writing skill, IMO.

They acknowledge this, but I really dislike whatever style they're using for the readme: > Yes, this README breaks half of them. Marketing is explicitly out of STE scope. The skill knows that and stays in the docs. > Where it refuses to go: marketing copy, blog voice, brand writing. Flat on purpose. (Each sentence there has an emoji that HN cuts out)

And the goddamn emojis. I get it, people use them when texting to make the writing a bit more chummy, but I can really live without them everywhere else.
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