ASD‑STE100 Skill – Simplified Technical English for AI agents

What it is

• A Claude Code skill that rewrites dense or ambiguous English into ASD‑STE100 Simplified Technical English (STE). It is aimed at machine‑to‑machine communication – e.g., an LLM agent processing another agent’s output, tool descriptions, error messages, or system prompts.

Why it matters

• STE is a controlled‑language standard used in aerospace/defence to avoid misinterpretation. The same constraints (one meaning per word, active voice, short sentences, no dropped words) help LLM agents avoid parsing errors when there is no human back‑channel.

Key features (as described in the README)

• Two modes: Strict (procedures, error messages, tool specs) and STE‑flavored (READMEs, PR descriptions, explanatory prose). The latter keeps sentence discipline but relaxes the fixed‑vocabulary requirement.
• Rule‑based linter that flags structural violations such as ambiguous words, passive voice, multi‑instruction sentences, long sentences, certain phrasal verbs, nominalisations, marketing adjectives, semicolons, etc.
• Deterministic rewrite: each flagged sentence is rewritten while preserving all facts, conditions, and scope qualifiers. If a shorter rewrite would lose precision, the original is kept and a “Kept as‑is” note is added.
• Optional diff / rule explanation: ask the skill to “show the diff” or “explain the changes” and it returns a before/after table with the rule(s) that were broken.
• No hidden preamble – the output is just the rewritten text (plus optional one‑line note).

Installation

• Quick: npx skills add danyuchn/asd-ste100-skill (uses the skills CLI, sends only anonymous telemetry).
• Manual: clone the repo into ~/.claude/skills/asd-ste100 and pull updates with git pull.

Typical usage

Disambiguate this tool description
Rewrite this error message so an agent can't misparse it
Apply ASD‑STE100 to this instruction

• Paste any English text and request a simplification. Add “show the diff” or “explain the changes” to see which STE rules were applied.

Scope & limits

• Designed for agent‑to‑agent messages, tool/function descriptions, error messages, system prompts, inter‑agent instructions.
• Not intended for creative writing, marketing copy, or any text where tone and nuance are essential.
• The skill only enforces structural STE rules; it does not verify that the rewritten text retains the exact requirement strength or meaning beyond the flagged patterns.
• It does not include the official ~900‑word STE dictionary (copyright‑protected). Vocabulary checks are advisory only.

Related projects

• Hebrew port: g4lb/asd-ste100-hebrew-skill.
• meiluosi/rewrite-fidelity-skill – compares original and rewritten text for meaning changes.

License

• MIT License (see LICENSE).

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All details are taken directly from the repository’s README; no additional features are inferred.