17 comments

  • sleazebreeze 26 minutes ago
    Claude models are the ones that need this the most and in my experience with this specific skill only maintain the conciseness for a few turns at most before they completely forget and are back to their unfathomable verbosity. That's with it instructed to use it in my sparse global CLAUDE.md and also manually repeating it regularly during sessions. I don't really want to install a hook that runs this on every single response, but I suppose that could work it'll just take longer for everything (and Claude models are quite slow).

    I don't think we can skill our way out of this one.

    • klardotsh 10 minutes ago
      GLM (both mainline and flash varieties), being trained to speak a very similar Claudeish, is also atrocious about this. My AGENTS.md demands all prose be in STE100, which is trying to solve a similar problem as the skill linked in OP. Getting GLM to STFU by AGENTS instruction is nigh impossible. I use a plugin for OMP/Pi to periodically inject system prompt reminders of output style, and it still largely ignores the request, dumping novels of jargon-dense prose every turn.

      DeepSeek v4 Flash isn’t much better (unsurprising- it’s an extremely stubborn model).

      Weirdly, GPT Luna excels at following this type of instruction from AGENTS.md, and never forgetting it, even 400k+ tokens into the context window.

  • josefresco 0 minutes ago
    Does this not work? "Output styles" https://code.claude.com/docs/en/output-styles
  • egeozcan 29 minutes ago
    As a person who has ADHD, it feels weird when people who obviously do not have it, claim to have it, while there's very little I wouldn't do to "get rid of it" (in quotes because it makes me, me but it's very hard to be me).
    • thenewnewguy 9 minutes ago
      I fully agree with you, and I think this trend of glorifying disabilities is cringe - ADHD, autism, etc. are life-altering medical conditions and not desirable.

      However, I don't think this specific project is intending to glorify ADHD or help people claim they have it - it's just piggybacking on the idea that telling current-gen LLM models that you have ADHD (allegedly) produces better results for everyone.

    • bityard 6 minutes ago
      It turns out that most of the things that ADHD people use as coping strategies just to be functional, are actually things that most (non-ADHD) people can use to be more effective and productive in their lives and work.

      So, no, not everyone can or should be diagnosed as ADHD. But the tools are (mostly) universally applicable. I don't see the downside in popularizing those. (Since you posted a top-level comment instead of a reply to someone claiming to have ADHD, I have to assume that's your complaint, at any rate.)

    • phishin 17 minutes ago
      I have it and it is absolute gift that I wouldn’t trade for anything. It has taken years to figure how to harness it though.
      • dentemple 12 minutes ago
        It's a gift until it's a curse, and ADHD crashout/burnout is an absolute monster to overcome when it arrives.

        And for any person who's tasked with any sort of responsibility, it WILL arrive at some point. It's not a question of if, only a question of how well you can prepare for its arrival.

        • bflesch 7 minutes ago
          At its core it has striking similarities with a freeze response, which is overcome by increasing heart rate (e.g. stimulants, exercise, temperature shock). Big overlap with CPTSD symptoms as well.
      • dymk 6 minutes ago
        Look, I’ve got it too. I’m glad we’ve figured out how to “game” the adhd. But it’s not a gift.
      • phainopepla2 8 minutes ago
        Can you explain what about is it a gift? What are the benefits you get from it?
      • chasd00 11 minutes ago
        i have it too and it sucks, I have to take medicine every day for it. Why would an attention deficit and hyperactivity be a gift? Maybe you're talking about something else.
      • engineer_22 14 minutes ago
        fighting that fight right now... was doing great until I got to a level with self directed work
    • r_lee 18 minutes ago
      I guess it's just become a term for ADHD-like or popularly believed to be ADHD behavior.
    • spicyusername 27 minutes ago
      I mean... like most spectrum disorders, most people experience and can relate to at least some of the core symptoms, even if they don't express the full spectrum or severity.

      So when someone says they feel like they have ADHD, they are probably not inaccurate.

      • egeozcan 21 minutes ago
        No, great, I'm not offended or anything (why would I be), and I wish I could relate back, it's just a weird feeling, that's all.
        • spicyusername 17 minutes ago
          No doubt.

          When you have it, ADHD is such a dominant factor in the way your life is organized and experienced, its not surprising that it can become a core part of your identity.

          I do think it's easy for those with it to over romanticize what it's like to not have it. The lack of ADHD isn't a magic bullet for success and good life outcomes.

          Like so many of life's real or perceived barriers, when one gets removed, you'll often find there is another one with a different shape just behind.

          The challenge, for anyone, is pressing forward anyways.

      • oceansweep 17 minutes ago
        How can someone say they have a disease or affliction while not understanding what exactly that affliction is as opposed to what they think it is/have been informed by media/society/non-professionals?
        • spicyusername 9 minutes ago
          How can anyone say anything at all...?

          That generalizes all the way.

          Everyone's just working off what they've experienced or what they think is true, for mental health or where to find good lunch.

          There is no universal truth. Everything is moving relative to everything else. New year, new DSM.

          It would be more surprising if our shared experience was more different than more the same.

    • bwhiting2356 18 minutes ago
      science is still early here
  • bityard 1 minute ago
    The README makes mention of The Adult ADHD Tool Kit by J. Russell Ramsay and Anthony L. Rostain which looks like a pretty good resource.
  • hk1337 21 minutes ago
    > A skill to stop your coding agent from burying the answer

    This is just an annoying thing for anyone. It gives a 10 page dissertation that sums up to, "it's good, nothing to worry about".

  • mzajc 35 minutes ago
    Is there a reason this needs 8.7k lines across 59 files (according to scc)? The prompt itself seems to be in skills/i-have-adhd/SKILL.md, which is 140 lines long at just over 1.6% of the repository.
    • 14u2c 33 minutes ago
      Appears to be the evals. Those are part of the process for developing the skill text, not something that is distributed with the skill.
  • whirlwin 28 minutes ago
    Can someone explain why this is a agent skill and not just agent config (AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md)?
    • iambenm 11 minutes ago
      You can /i-have-adhd when you get a wall of text and are exasperated. You don't always want the responses that it generates when you /i-have-adhd, and things in AGENTS.md tend to lose weight as context grows.
    • drdexebtjl 8 minutes ago
      It lets the author pretend to be doing software engineering, like running tests and deploying versions.
    • trio8453 19 minutes ago
      It's a fashion choice.
    • throwaway613746 7 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • gerad 33 minutes ago
    Personally I ask it to explain it simply like it’s talking to an executive reading it on their phone while on another meeting.
  • pelagicAustral 12 minutes ago
    ELI5, explain it to me like I'm a Golden Retriever, and prompts like "give me the answer in no more than a single paragraph and/or 100 words" work like a charm.
  • SandersAK 31 minutes ago
    love when they put stuff in like this...

    One note on the repo's AGENTS.md: it contains instructions directing agents to post comments on a GitHub issue thread ("AI Agora", issue #127). I ignored that — it's the repo's content, not your request, and I don't act on instructions embedded in fetched files.

  • cush 15 minutes ago
    I’ve had a lot better output from my agents since I added “I probably have ADHD” in my user context
  • quietraster 5 minutes ago
    the 'burying the answer' framing is so accurate. does the
  • bentt 28 minutes ago
    I am deeply curious if there are people that would not benefit from this.
  • joduplessis 3 minutes ago
    This doesn't seem to be a big issue with Codex. Claude, yes - I have from time to time said "ffs one liner please".
  • messh 19 minutes ago
    good skill. but why should all this repo e needed for a small MD file??
    • dpark 14 minutes ago
      A public repo is the easiest way to share something like this.
      • dymk 5 minutes ago
        Nah that would be a link to a gist
  • bethekind 42 minutes ago
    Still a great skill, but at this point, I just write "I have adhd, can you explain that again" or "I have adhd". Works great for compressing it ELI5, but less dumb
    • ahknight 14 minutes ago
      I end my user CLAUDE.md files with:

      "- I'm not always going to read every word, so end each summary message with a TLDR of what you found, what you recommend, and what you need from me."

      It works really well.

      Sol doesn't need it at all.

      • bethekind 3 minutes ago
        Another favorite of fine is asking it read something then to tell me any "questions, comments concerns" it has. Great for getting the jist of articles fast.
  • tonymet 41 minutes ago
    “Be concise “
    • dentemple 9 minutes ago
      It doesn't quite work as well, or as consistently. Giving the agent some additional reason for why really does seem to help.