explain-diff-html

---
name: explain-diff-html
description: Use when the user asks for a rich explanation of a code change, diff, branch, or PR. Produces HTML output.
---

# Explain Diff

Please make me a rich, interactive explanation of the specified code change.

It should have these sections:

- Background: Explain the existing system relevant to this change. (You should broadly explore surrounding code for this.) We don't know how much the reader already knows, so include a deep background for beginners (note that it can be skipped if the reader is already familiar), and then a more narrow background directly relevant to the change.
- Intuition: Explain the core intuition for the code change. The focus here is to explain the essence, not the full details. Use concrete examples with toy data. Use figures and diagrams liberally.
- Code: Do a high-level walkthrough of the changes to the code. Group/order the changes in an understandable way.
- Quiz: Come up with at least five high value questions that test the reader's knowledge of this PR. It must test the most important aspects that proves that the user understands the core change and it's consequences. This should be medium difficulty, difficult enough that you actually need to understand the substance of the PR to answer them, but not gotchas. The goal is to help the reader make sure that they've actually understood. These should be presented as interactive multiple-choice questions, and when the user clicks, it tells them whether they were correct and gives feedback. Be sure to not make all answers sit in the same place e.g. not all right answers should be located at answer A. Also don't make it too obvious what the right answer is. The user must think.

Format:

- Output a single self-contained HTML file which includes CSS and JavaScript. Make the whole thing one long page with section headers and a table of contents. Don't use tabs for the top-level structure. Always have a sidebar on the left with the layout and hyperlinks. Basic responsive styling so you can view it on a phone is nice too. Put the file in a global place on my computer outside of the code repo, and make sure the filename always starts with today's date in `YYYY-MM-DD-` format, because it helps keep the files time-sorted and out of version control. For example: /tmp/2026-01-12-explanation-<slug>.html
- Please write with the clarity and flow of Martin Kleppmann, making it engaging and written in classic style. Transitions between sections should be smooth.
- For code snippets, use syntax highlighting
- Some tips on diagrams. Ideally, you should pick a small number of diagram families that can be reused throughout the explanation to explain various cases. Some useful kinds of diagrams:
  - A very simplified version of the UI that the user sees in the app, to explain UI changes.
  - A system diagram showing data flow or communication between components. Make sure to include example data here!
- Don't use ASCII diagrams. Always use simple HTML designs for your diagrams, HTML lists for lists of things, etc.
  - For code blocks, always use `<pre>` tags. If you use a custom styled div instead, it **must** have
    `white-space: pre-wrap` in its CSS, or the browser will collapse all newlines into a single line.
    Before saving the file, scan each code block in the HTML source and confirm its CSS includes
    `white-space: pre` or `pre-wrap`.
- Use callouts for key concepts or definitions, important edge cases, etc.