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 36 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.
egeozcan 55 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 35 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.
phishin 43 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 38 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 33 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 32 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 34 minutes ago [-]
Can you explain what about is it a gift? What are the benefits you get from it?
amazingman 23 minutes ago [-]
I have found both hyperfocus and the ability to quickly "drop" (i.e. distract from) a train of thought incredibly useful.
chasd00 37 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 40 minutes ago [-]
fighting that fight right now... was doing great until I got to a level with self directed work
r_lee 44 minutes ago [-]
I guess it's just become a term for ADHD-like or popularly believed to be ADHD behavior.
bityard 32 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.)
VCFundedGenYer 7 minutes ago [-]
Same. It started on Tumblr around 15 years ago when people were "self-diagnosing" themselves then it spiraled out of control. It really bothers me because I see a lot of of obviously-not-neurodivergent folks try to use it as an excuse (I am diagnosed formally + can easily detect if someone is just spouting nonsense about it)
bwhiting2356 44 minutes ago [-]
science is still early here
on_the_train 12 minutes ago [-]
Ah yes the old "I have it but you don't"
spicyusername 53 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 47 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 43 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.
Ydarbleoj 13 minutes ago [-]
I think this is a good point. My only push back would be that when people say they have ADHD, in my experience, they're speaking about inattention (and yes, it's one of the big factors).
And while I don't love that aspect in me and often eat cold toast as result, I find that to be the least of what I struggle with (hitting every wall while walking from point A to B or constantly counting / tapping on my fingers or pulling the skin off my fingers or the anxiety or the hyper focus (love it too!) to where I lose hours upon hours...).
All this to say, I'm never offended when people use it but typically it's rooted in a narrow understanding of something that's used as a pejorative. I think there's research that by age 12 kids with ADHD have heard 20,000 more negative or corrective comments than there peers.
I mean, I can read quite a bit but if my agent / harness is producing monographs the fix has nothing to do with my ADHD. So to me, this repo seems lame.
oceansweep 43 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 35 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.
hk1337 47 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".
VCFundedGenYer 6 minutes ago [-]
Every chat bot has this problem. If you don't tell it to respond tersely and without conversation, it will waste a billion tokens giving you a 5 paragraph manifesto of rambling and useless redundant information.
mzajc 1 hours 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 59 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 54 minutes ago [-]
Can someone explain why this is a agent skill and not just agent config (AGENTS.md / CLAUDE.md)?
SamuelAdams 17 minutes ago [-]
Skills are kind of a new thing starting around January 2026, but the spec was established about 12 months ago.
Anyways the most layman way I’ve seen it explained is this: skills help save token usage for the right context. Not every request needs all instructions all the time - running tests is different than reviewing a PR, so why should the context window have instructions for both on every request?
So now you split instructions into “skill” files, which are basically opinionated markdown files. And you invoke those with something like /grill-me in the prompt depending on what you’re doing.
There are some steps to have the agent automatically know what to invoke for you but in my experience this automation is hit or miss.
It is also challenging to keep track of a growing library of skills and keeping those up to date.
So YMMV regarding skills. I typically keep things in a single markdown file even if the context window gets a bit bloated.
iambenm 37 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.
trio8453 45 minutes ago [-]
It's a fashion choice.
drdexebtjl 34 minutes ago [-]
It lets the author pretend to be doing software engineering, like running tests and deploying versions.
throwaway613746 33 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
gerad 59 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.
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.
pelagicAustral 38 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 57 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.
bentt 54 minutes ago [-]
I am deeply curious if there are people that would not benefit from this.
cush 41 minutes ago [-]
I’ve had a lot better output from my agents since I added “I probably have ADHD” in my user context
thefourthchime 25 minutes ago [-]
I asked my agent if I should install this because I already have a bunch of instructions that are similar.
For example, if it's going to give me an answer that's longer than three paragraphs, I tell it to give me a TLDR at the end. This is what it gave me for this.
"TL;DR: Skip the install. You already built a better version for your world. If numbered steps and "where are we?" restatements still feel missing, cherry-pick those into one short rule instead of adding another full skill on top."
quietraster 31 minutes ago [-]
the 'burying the answer' framing is so accurate. does the
messh 45 minutes ago [-]
good skill. but why should all this repo e needed for a small MD file??
dpark 40 minutes ago [-]
A public repo is the easiest way to share something like this.
dymk 31 minutes ago [-]
Nah that would be a link to a gist
dpark 25 minutes ago [-]
I suppose that’s also reasonable, though this particular repo also hosts evals and other content related to the skill. So a gist seems like it would be an addition, not a replacement.
bethekind 1 hours 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 40 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 29 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.
joduplessis 29 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".
tonymet 1 hours ago [-]
“Be concise “
dentemple 35 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.
Rendered at 16:32:54 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
I don't think we can skill our way out of this one.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
So when someone says they feel like they have ADHD, they are probably not inaccurate.
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.
And while I don't love that aspect in me and often eat cold toast as result, I find that to be the least of what I struggle with (hitting every wall while walking from point A to B or constantly counting / tapping on my fingers or pulling the skin off my fingers or the anxiety or the hyper focus (love it too!) to where I lose hours upon hours...).
All this to say, I'm never offended when people use it but typically it's rooted in a narrow understanding of something that's used as a pejorative. I think there's research that by age 12 kids with ADHD have heard 20,000 more negative or corrective comments than there peers.
I mean, I can read quite a bit but if my agent / harness is producing monographs the fix has nothing to do with my ADHD. So to me, this repo seems lame.
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.
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".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46871173
Anyways the most layman way I’ve seen it explained is this: skills help save token usage for the right context. Not every request needs all instructions all the time - running tests is different than reviewing a PR, so why should the context window have instructions for both on every request?
So now you split instructions into “skill” files, which are basically opinionated markdown files. And you invoke those with something like /grill-me in the prompt depending on what you’re doing.
There are some steps to have the agent automatically know what to invoke for you but in my experience this automation is hit or miss.
It is also challenging to keep track of a growing library of skills and keeping those up to date.
So YMMV regarding skills. I typically keep things in a single markdown file even if the context window gets a bit bloated.
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.
For example, if it's going to give me an answer that's longer than three paragraphs, I tell it to give me a TLDR at the end. This is what it gave me for this.
"TL;DR: Skip the install. You already built a better version for your world. If numbered steps and "where are we?" restatements still feel missing, cherry-pick those into one short rule instead of adding another full skill on top."
"- 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.