Karpathy's Tip: Ask LLMs to Explain in ASD-STE100

Melvin Vivas · X post · 2026-10-02 · Open on X

Topics: Prompt & Context Engineering · Level: beginner

Summary

Shares Andrej Karpathy's tips for understanding LLM outputs. One writing trick: ask the LLM to explain a topic in ASD-STE100 (Simplified Technical English), a controlled language specification. This gives clearer, more consistent explanations.

Key points

• We will spend more and more time reading and understanding LLM outputs.
• Writing trick: ask your LLM to explain something in ASD-STE100.
• ASD-STE100 (Simplified Technical English) is a controlled language specification with limited vocabulary and strict writing rules.
• Constraining the output language makes explanations simpler and easier to understand.

Resources mentioned

• Andrej Karpathy · person · karpathy.ai · free · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
  AI researcher and educator known for clear, free lessons on neural networks and LLMs.
  Also in: Grok Team Bots: Shared AI Teammates in Slack and Grok (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), 6 Free Videos to Move from Software Engineer to AI Engineer (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Claude Opus 5.5 Released: Fable 5.1-Level Performance at 40% Lower Cost (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), ChatGPT Images 2.5 (GPT Image 2.5): What's New in OpenAI's Image Update (Melvin Vivas on X · notes)
• ASD-STE100 (Simplified Technical English) · docs · asd-ste100.org · check price
  A controlled language specification for writing clear technical text, which you can ask an LLM to follow.

Try this

• Ask your LLM to explain a hard concept in ASD-STE100 (Simplified Technical English) and compare the clarity.