busyeugene Proofreading + Style Check
Check any markdown article against editorial-guidelines.md and seo-best-practices.md. Returns two artifacts: an inline-edited copy with suggested changes marked, and a findings report categorized by severity.
Setup
No required keys. Optional:
LANGUAGETOOL_ENDPOINT(defaulthttps://api.languagetool.org/v2) — adds a free grammar/spelling pass on top of Claude's native review. Works keyless, or self-host LanguageTool for privacy.
Inputs
- Article path (required). Glob
posts/*.mdand let the user pick if not specified. - Editorial guidelines path — default
./editorial-guidelines.md. If missing, fall back to the shared voice reference and note it. - Severity threshold —
critical,warning,suggestion. Default: report all three.
Process
1. Load inputs
- Read the article.
- Read the editorial guidelines.
- Read
{SKILL_BASE}/../_shared/seo-best-practices.md.
2. Extract rules into a checklist
From the editorial guidelines, pull:
- Banned words/phrases list
- Preferred words and naming conventions
- Sentence length ceiling
- Paragraph length ceiling
- POV (we/you/I/third)
- Contractions policy
- Emoji policy
- Serial comma rule
- Numerals vs words rule
- Reading level target
- Structural defaults for the article's format (how-to / comparison / opinion / case study — infer from the article or ask)
From the SEO best practices, pull the hard rules:
- Primary keyword in first 100 words
- Keyword in H1 and at least one H2
- Exactly one H1, no skipped heading levels
- 2–4 outbound authoritative links
- At least 3 descriptive internal links
- Meta title 50–60 chars, meta description 140–160 chars
- Hero image alt text present and descriptive
3. Pass 1 — mechanical checks (deterministic)
Walk the article and flag every occurrence of:
- Banned words (exact match, case-insensitive)
- Wrong product-name casing
- Sentences over the length ceiling
- Paragraphs over the length ceiling
- POV violations (e.g. first-person in a you-mode guideline)
- Missing Oxford commas in lists of 3+ where the rule is set
- Heading-level skips (H2 → H4)
- More than one H1
- Missing frontmatter fields
Each flag becomes a finding with: line number, severity, rule name, the offending text, and a suggested fix.
4. Pass 2 — SEO compliance (deterministic)
Check the article against the SEO rules list above. Each violation becomes a critical finding.
5. Pass 3 — voice and tone (Claude judgment)
Read the whole article and judge voice match. Flag:
- Sections that feel off-brand compared to the guidelines' voice attributes
- Hype-y phrasing that skirts the banned list without matching exact strings
- Weak ledes (the first sentence of a section doesn't state the claim)
- Sections that don't earn their place (could be cut without losing value)
- Missing the "one thing competitors don't cover" originality test
- Closers that don't point to a concrete next action
Each flag is a warning or suggestion.
6. Pass 4 — optional grammar layer
If LANGUAGETOOL_ENDPOINT is set, POST the article body to /check:
POST ${LANGUAGETOOL_ENDPOINT}/check
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
text=<body>&language=en-US&enabledOnly=false
Map each match to a finding with severity suggestion (grammar) or warning (likely errors). Deduplicate against Pass 1 findings.
7. Write two artifacts
Artifact 1: inline-edited copy at review/<slug>-edited.md
Copy of the original with suggested changes marked using <del> / <ins> HTML tags so diffs are visible in any markdown renderer:
The product is a <del>revolutionary</del><ins>category-defining</ins> platform.
Artifact 2: findings report at review/<slug>-report.md
# Review: {slug}
_Checked against: {path to editorial-guidelines.md}_
_Date: {YYYY-MM-DD}_
## Summary
- **Critical:** {n} — must fix before publishing
- **Warnings:** {n} — strongly recommended
- **Suggestions:** {n} — worth considering
## Critical findings
### [L{line}] {rule name}
- **Found:** {offending text}
- **Why it matters:** {1 line}
- **Suggested fix:** {fix}
{…}
## Warnings
{same structure}
## Suggestions
{same structure}
## Checklist summary
| Check | Result |
|---|---|
| Primary keyword in first 100 words | ✅/❌ |
| Keyword in H1 | ✅/❌ |
| Keyword in ≥1 H2 | ✅/❌ |
| Exactly one H1 | ✅/❌ |
| No skipped heading levels | ✅/❌ |
| Meta title length (50–60) | ✅/❌ |
| Meta description length (140–160) | ✅/❌ |
| ≥3 internal links | ✅/❌ |
| 2–4 outbound links | ✅/❌ |
| Hero alt text present | ✅/❌ |
| No banned words | ✅/❌ |
| Sentence length within ceiling | ✅/❌ |
| Reading level in target range | ✅/❌ |
| Closer has concrete next action | ✅/❌ |
8. Print summary to console
5 lines: path to edited file, path to report, counts of critical/warning/suggestion, and a one-line verdict (ready to publish, fix criticals first, needs rewrite).
Fallbacks
- No editorial guidelines: use shared voice reference, note it in the report header. Voice/tone findings are marked
suggestiononly (notwarning) since the rules weren't user-authored. - LanguageTool unavailable: skip Pass 4, note it in the report.
- Article has no frontmatter: still check the body, but flag missing frontmatter as a
critical.
Verification
- Both artifacts exist under
review/. - Findings report has a populated checklist table.
- Every finding has a line number, severity, rule name, and suggested fix.
- Running this skill twice on the same unchanged article produces identical reports (deterministic within a run).