talk-slow
May 9, 2026 · View on GitHub
A Claude Code skill that delivers information progressively instead of all at once.
Install
In Claude Code, run:
/plugin marketplace add josharsh/talk-slow
Or manually:
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/talk-slow
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/josharsh/talk-slow/main/skills/talk-slow/SKILL.md \
-o ~/.claude/skills/talk-slow/SKILL.md
Why I Built This
Two things kept bugging me.
First — I'd ask Claude to explain something and get back a wall of text. Architecture diagrams, implementation details, edge cases, alternatives, caveats. By the time I finished reading it, I'd forgotten what the first paragraph said. My brain isn't a parser. I can't process 200 lines of technical explanation in one pass.
Second — I'd ask for a plan, Claude would write the whole thing out, and I'd read the first two sentences and realize I wanted a completely different approach. Everything after those two sentences was wasted tokens. This happened constantly with multi-step tasks where the direction wasn't clear yet.
/talk-slow makes Claude pause after each logical chunk and check in before continuing. If you get it after the first part, you say so and move on. If you want to redirect, you redirect before Claude burns tokens on the wrong path.
How It Works
Instead of one long response, Claude breaks things into layers:
- The headline — 1-3 sentence summary. The minimum viable answer.
- Check in — "Want me to go deeper?" / "Does this track?"
- Next chunk — one concept, one function, one step. Not three.
- Check in again — and repeat until you have what you need.
For simple questions ("what extension do TypeScript files use?"), it just answers normally. Chunking only kicks in for explanations, plans, debugging walkthroughs, and large code changes.
If you ever want the full dump, just say "give me everything" and it delivers without pausing.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/talk-slow | Enable progressive chunking |
/talk-slow off | Disable it |
Testing
Tested with skillmother:
skillmother test skills/talk-slow/
Uninstalling
rm -rf ~/.claude/skills/talk-slow
License
MIT