Unpack the expert sentence.

Read this sentence

A PID controller minimizes error using proportional, integral and derivative terms.

Clear, if you already know it. Before you go on, count the ideas it takes for granted. How many words would you have to explain to someone who has never studied control systems?

Watch it get unpacked

The clip opens each hidden idea, one at a time, using cruise control as the example. Then it reads the sentence again.

The name for it

Unpack it

One example carries all six ideas: a car's cruise control, set to 60 mph, on a slight hill.

1. Controller. Something that keeps adjusting an input to hit a target. Cruise control adjusts the throttle to hold a speed.
2. Error. The gap between the target and what you have. At 52 mph, the error is 8.
3. Proportional. Push harder when the gap is bigger. Simple, but it settles short: as the gap shrinks, so does the push, and the hill wins.
4. Integral. Add up the gap over time. That running total keeps pushing until the gap is gone. Now the car reaches 60, but overshoots.
5. Derivative. Watch how fast the gap is closing, and ease off early. That trims the overshoot.
6. Minimizes. Together, the three terms drive the error toward zero and keep it there.

Read it again

A PID controller (adjusts the throttle) minimizes (drives the gap to zero) error (target minus actual) using proportional (push with the gap), integral (push with the gap's history) and derivative (ease off as it closes) terms.

Same sentence. Now every word opens onto something you understand. That's the goal: not to replace the expert sentence, but to make it readable.

Do it yourself

1. Pick one expert sentence from your field. Short is fine.
2. Underline every word a smart outsider wouldn't know.
3. Pick one concrete example that can carry all of them.
4. Explain each word with that example, in one or two plain sentences.
5. Read the original sentence again. If it still feels closed, you missed a word.

Feynman's test is the last step, done out loud: explain it to someone outside the field. Wherever you stall, you've found the part you don't understand yet.

Ask your agent

Here is an expert sentence. Unpack it, Feynman style.
1. List every term or idea the sentence takes for granted. Number them.
2. Pick one concrete, everyday example that can illustrate all of them.
3. Explain each numbered idea in one or two plain sentences, using that example.
4. Repeat the original sentence, unchanged, so I can read it again with the new understanding.
Don't simplify the sentence itself. Don't leave out any idea.

Sentence:
[paste here]

What good output looks like: a numbered list of hidden ideas, one example running through all of them, and the original sentence at the end, untouched.