Answer The Why, Not Only The What

by tangxiangru

Answer The Why, Not Only The What is a Writing skill for Claude Code, published by tangxiangru in AutoR.

804 stars25 forkson tangxiangru/AutoRAdded 2026/08/22Repository updated 2026/08/22

View source on GitHub Download repo ZIP

agentaiai-scientistauto-researchclaudeclaude-codecliharnessllmopenaipaperscience

Install in seconds

Install Answer The Why, Not Only The What

Copy Answer The Why, Not Only The What into your Claude Code skills folder. Run the command in your terminal, or review the source on GitHub before installing.

terminal

npx degit https://github.com/tangxiangru/AutoR/tree/main/src/skills/answer-the-why-not-only-the-what ~/.claude/skills/answer-the-why-not-only-the-what

Requires Node.js. Downloads this skill only — not the rest of the repository — into your Claude Code skills folder.

Without Node.js

git clone https://github.com/tangxiangru/AutoR.git

Clones the whole repository, then copy the skill’s own directory into your skills folder yourself.

In this catalog

Source file: src/skills/answer-the-why-not-only-the-what/SKILL.md in tangxiangru/AutoR
Installs to: ~/.claude/skills/answer-the-why-not-only-the-what
Collection: One of 25 skills cataloged from this repository
Category: Writing — 1012 skills

What Answer The Why, Not Only The What does

Answer The Why, Not Only The What helps you write results and discussion sections that explain why an effect happens, not just whether it happened. Use it when a reviewer or task asks for mechanism claims, competing explanations, or limits on what the data support.

Answer The Why, Not Only The What is cataloged under Writing on DirSkills. Answer The Why, Not Only The What comes from a repository tagged agent, ai, ai-scientist, auto-research and claude.

Documentation

README

Excerpt

A measured effect is half the result

Plenty of the questions a study is judged on are not "what is the number" but "why is it that number": why two methods that should differ give the same gain, why an effect is larger in one regime, why the improvement vanishes past a threshold, what the failure cases have in common.

A report can measure such an effect precisely and score nothing on it, because it never says what the effect is evidence of. Numbers are the input to that argument, not the argument.

What a mechanism claim needs

This is the opening of the README. Read the full README on GitHub.

Frequently asked about Answer The Why, Not Only The What

What else does tangxiangru publish alongside Answer The Why, Not Only The What?
Answer The Why, Not Only The What is one of 25 skills that DirSkills catalogs from tangxiangru/AutoR, the repository it ships in. Its siblings there include A Deliverable Is Not an Instruction, A Value You Did Not Measure Still Has A Source and Assume This Stage Is The Last One You Get. Each one is a separate skill with its own page in this directory, installs the same way Answer The Why, Not Only The What does, and is maintained by tangxiangru in that same repository. The rest of the collection is listed on the tangxiangru/AutoR page.
How does Answer The Why, Not Only The What compare to other Writing skills?
Answer The Why, Not Only The What ranks #555 by stars among the 1012 Writing skills in this catalog. The most-starred ones next to it are Article Writing, Social Media Content Calendar and Knowledge Comic Creator. DirSkills ranks by the star count of the repository each skill ships in, so that order reflects how popular those repositories are rather than any review of Answer The Why, Not Only The What against them. Open each page to compare what they document and how they install.