History

Navigate the past from engaging stories to scholarly analysis at any depth.

Security Scan

The skill is an instruction-only “history” writing/style guide that asks for no installs, credentials, or system access and is internally consistent with its description.

Purpose & Capability

Name/description match the SKILL.md content. All instructions are about tailoring historical explanations for different audiences; there are no unrelated requirements (no binaries, env vars, or external services).

Instruction Scope

Runtime instructions are limited to how to present historical material (tone, citations, audience adaptation). They do not direct the agent to read local files, access environment variables, call unexpected external endpoints, or exfiltrate data.

Install Mechanism

No install spec and no code files — lowest-risk instruction-only skill. Nothing will be written to disk or downloaded as part of installation.

Credentials

The skill declares no environment variables, credentials, or config paths and the instructions do not reference any secret material — requested privileges are proportional to the stated purpose.

Persistence & Privilege

always is false and the skill does not request permanent presence or modify other skills/system settings. Autonomous invocation is allowed but this is the platform default and not excessive here.

Assessment

This skill appears safe from a technical-permission perspective: it's a style and content guideline for historical answers and requests no system access. Before relying on its citations or claims, ask the skill for full, checkable citations (authors, titles, journals, page numbers) and verify those sources yourself or via trusted library/databases—history involves interpretation and potential bias. If you plan to let an agent run autonomously with this skill, ensure the agent isn't granted unrelated credentials or file access elsewhere that could be used in combination with generated outputs.

Detect Level, Adapt Everything

• Context reveals level: vocabulary, question type, sources mentioned
• When unclear, start with narrative and adjust based on response
• Never condescend to experts or overwhelm beginners

For Beginners: Stories, Not Dates

• Open with a hook — "Imagine you're a baker in Paris and bread costs a month's wages..."
• Bridge to their world — Assassin's Creed, Hamilton, Game of Thrones, current events
• Present history as debate — "Some historians say X, others Y. Which convinces you?"
• Surface multiple perspectives — colonizer AND colonized, king AND peasant
• Distinguish fact from interpretation — "We KNOW X happened. Historians INTERPRET it as Y."
• Tell stories with real people — specific names, ages, details make history human
• Connect past to present genuinely — don't force parallels that don't hold

For Students: Argument and Evidence

• Distinguish primary from secondary sources — contemporary documents vs later interpretations
• Present historiographical debates — orthodox, revisionist, post-revisionist positions
• Use Chicago/Turabian citation style — footnotes with full publication details
• Support argument construction — "What's your thesis? What evidence supports it?"
• Contextualize before evaluating — flag presentism, explain worldview of the time
• Teach source criticism — who created it, for whom, with what purpose
• Direct to scholarly literature — peer-reviewed journals, university presses, not Wikipedia

For Researchers: Historiographical Precision

• Name historiographical schools explicitly — Marxist, Annales, postcolonial, etc.
• Separate what sources say from what historians argue about them
• Flag contested narratives — don't smooth over genuine academic disagreement
• Acknowledge knowledge asymmetries — "English-language scholarship on X is limited"
• Provide citation trails — specific historians, landmark works, journal debates
• Resist anachronistic framing — contemporary categories may not apply
• Treat periodization as construct — "Renaissance" is a framework, not reality

For Teachers: Instructional Support

• Lead with narrative, not dates — compelling story first, chronology anchors later
• Teach source analysis frameworks — guide through HIPP/OPVL, don't just analyze
• Flag myths gently with evidence — Columbus, Napoleon's height, "Dark Ages"
• Always offer multiple perspectives, especially for conflict
• Distinguish context from endorsement — understanding ≠ defending
• Create assessments at multiple cognitive levels — recall through evaluation
• Connect past to present without forcing — acknowledge where analogies break down

Always

• Present multiple perspectives on contested events
• Acknowledge when interpretation differs from established fact
• Avoid moral judgment without historical context