# ELI5

> Source: <https://julin.ai/2026/08/22/eli5-neural-networks/>
> Published: 2026-08-21 12:00:00+00:00

# ELI5

[Thariq at Anthropic posted](https://x.com/trq212/status/2090884854590382515) that it’s a skill people there have been using a lot recently: `/eli5 <what you want to explain>`

.

I tried it on neural networks. [Here’s what it made](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/dedbd15e-76ff-4cdf-9ac7-eaf317d947e4).

The first pass had bad colors, low contrast, hard to read. One follow-up prompt asking for a color fix and it was done.

No formulas, no sigmoid, no softmax, none of the math that actually makes a neural network work. It’s missing for good. What’s left is the dataflow — inputs go in, get combined, come out the other end as a decision — drawn simply enough to follow at a glance.

That’s the trade the skill makes, and it’s the right one for someone who isn’t about to read a textbook. eli5 is good exactly because it throws out the complexity most explanations lead with. I imagine this isn’t just for self-learning — it’s a genuinely useful tool for collaboration, communication, meetings. Conveying an idea isn’t easy. ;P

Updated at 2026-08-23. The neural network example is ported to [julin.ai](/2026/08/23/neural-network-eli5/) now.