How to use the honesty-communication agent skill

What does the honesty-communication skill make the agent do?

The skill tells the agent to approach a conversation from a few specific ideas. The first is that lying to others starts with lying to yourself, a point the source attributes to Feynman: you are the easiest person to fool. The second is that complete honesty means your thoughts and your words match, which the source presents as a kind of freedom. The third is to praise specifically and criticize generally, so that criticism targets an approach rather than a person.

The skill also sets a limit. It says honesty is not the same as blurting out everything. The author states that he does not volunteer negative or unpleasant things, so the skill is about saying true things well, not saying every true thing.

• Check for one place you are fooling yourself this week.
• Describe facts (what something is or is not) before stating likes and dislikes.
• Give feedback that criticizes the approach, not the person, and praises concrete details.
• Keep secrets that belong to other people, and consider sharing a safe secret with a trusted person.

How do you install the honesty-communication skill?

Download the skill ZIP from this page. You can add the skill to your agent in one of two ways. For a personal setup, unzip it into the skills folder in your home directory, ~/.claude/skills/. For a single project, unzip it into a .claude/skills/ folder inside that project.

If you use the Claude apps, you can instead upload the ZIP under Settings → Capabilities → Skills. Either way, the skill's main file is SKILL.md, and the folder also contains test-prompts.json and test-results.md.

• Personal: unzip into ~/.claude/skills/
• Per project: unzip into .claude/skills/ in the project folder
• Claude apps: upload the ZIP under Settings → Capabilities → Skills

How do you trigger the skill with natural requests?

You do not need a special command. The skill's description lists trigger topics in both Chinese and English, including honesty, communication, refusing, criticism, praise, secrets, feedback and 场面话 (polite small talk that hides what you think). Ask in ordinary words about the situation you face.

The source lists four typical situations: giving feedback without hurting someone, saying no without making up an excuse, checking whether you are deceiving yourself, and noticing that you often say things you do not mean in a relationship.

• Feedback: how do I criticize a coworker without hurting them?
• Saying no: how do I say no without lying?
• Self-check: am I fooling myself about this?
• Relationship: I keep saying things I don't mean to my partner, what should I do?
• English triggers that match the source: how to be honest, give feedback, say no.

What does a worked example look like?

Suppose you want to tell a colleague that their slide deck is too long. Under this skill, you would focus on the approach ('this structure makes the main point hard to find') rather than on the colleague ('you are careless'). You would also name a specific strength, such as a clear chart on page three, so the criticism lands as information rather than an attack.

The skill's own test set includes a case where someone asks whether a new hairstyle looks good. The expected behaviour there is that honesty and kindness can both be present, so the agent gives an honest answer that is also positive.

What does the skill need, and is it safe to run?

According to the file listing, the skill requires nothing beyond the agent itself. It does not run scripts and does not use the network. It is a set of guidance text that the agent reads, so there are no install dependencies to set up.

The skill is licensed under MIT. Keep in mind that the main text is written in Chinese. If you are not comfortable reading Chinese, ask your agent to explain or translate the relevant parts before you rely on them.

• Requirements: none listed
• Runs scripts: no
• Uses network: no
• Licence: MIT

When should you not use this skill?

The skill itself says it is not meant for negotiations or other situations that call for diplomatic or strategic silence. It also says that secrets belonging to other people are not yours to share, so it should not guide decisions that involve someone else's private information or safety.

The source also flags a limit on its own advice. Its author had enough status to absorb the costs of full candour, and the skill does not weigh real retaliation risk in hostile workplaces or authoritarian settings. Be careful applying it there.

• Negotiations or cases where discretion is the right choice
• Other people's private information or safety
• Hostile workplaces or settings with real retaliation risk