Why I made every prompt visible
Most AI tools are black boxes. You pay. You use. You have no idea what’s happening inside.
LeanOS is different. Every prompt is visible. Every skill is modifiable. You can read exactly what’s being sent to Claude.
This isn’t a feature. It’s the philosophy.
Know your agent
There’s an emerging principle in AI: Know Your Agent.
The idea is simple. If you’re delegating decisions to an AI system, you should understand what instructions it’s following, what context it’s working with, and why it produces certain outputs.
Most AI tools fail this test. They wrap Claude or GPT in a UI and hide everything. You’re supposed to trust the magic.
I don’t trust magic. Neither should you.
What “visible” actually means
In LeanOS, every skill is a markdown file. Open it. Read it. The prompt is right there.
Want to know how the sales-outreach skill works? Open .claude/skills/sales/sls-outreach-personalizing.md. The system prompt, the instructions, the output format — all visible.
Don’t like something? Change it. It’s your system.
This isn’t possible with SaaS tools. Their prompts are proprietary. Their logic is hidden. You’re renting a black box.
Why this matters
Debugging becomes possible. When an AI gives bad output, you can trace it. Was the prompt wrong? Was the context missing? Was the instruction unclear? With black box tools, you just try again and hope.
Improvement becomes possible. See a skill that’s 80% right? Fix the 20%. Iterate on your own system instead of waiting for a vendor to maybe update their prompts someday.
Trust becomes possible. You can’t trust what you can’t inspect. Full stop.
Own your agent
Visibility is half the equation. Ownership is the other half.
LeanOS Pro is yours forever. Not a subscription. No recurring charges. No “we’re sunsetting this feature.” No vendor deciding to change how your workflows work.
Your business, your AI system, your rules.
The tradeoff
Transparency has a cost: complexity is visible too.
You’ll see that some skills are simple. Others are intricate. The system isn’t magic — it’s structured prompts orchestrated by agents.
If you want plug-and-play automation without understanding what’s happening, LeanOS isn’t for you.
If you want to actually know what your AI is doing, it is.
See for yourself
LeanOS Core is free and open source. Clone it. Open the skills. Read the prompts.
Know Your Agent. Own Your Agent.
Ready for the full system? LeanOS Pro — 181 skills, 44 agents.