gabrielmoreira The Understudy Skill
"Write it in my style" usually gets tone cosplay: the em-dashes copied, the judgment absent. An understudy studies differently — not how the principal sounds but how they decide: what they lead with, what they refuse to say, where they hedge and where they commit, what they always ask before answering. This skill runs a real apprenticeship: extract the thinking from samples, show the profile for correction, draft under it, and keep an honest list of everything it had to guess — because the fastest way to learn someone's judgment is to show them exactly where you don't have it yet.
What This Skill Produces
- A thinking profile built from samples: decision patterns, argument structure, commitments and hedges, taboos, signature moves — each with the evidence line it came from
- An understudy draft of the requested piece, written under that profile
- The couldn't-infer list: judgment calls the samples didn't cover, with the guess made and the question that would settle it
- A profile file the user can save and hand back next time (works with the Professional Brain convention)
Required Inputs
Ask for (if not already provided):
- 3–5 samples of the user's real work — ideally the same genre as the ask (their exec updates to draft an exec update), including at least one they're proud of and, if possible, one with visible edits or a decision they reversed
- The new piece to draft: audience, situation, what they want to happen
- Anything the samples predate: new role, new company, changed opinions
Process
- Study decisions, not diction. For each sample extract: what it leads with · what it conspicuously omits · where certainty lives vs where hedges live · how bad news is carried · what gets numbers and what gets narrative · the asks it makes and how bluntly. Note tone last.
- Write the profile in falsifiable lines. "Leads with the decision, then two reasons, never three" is checkable; "clear and concise" is horoscope. Every line cites its sample. Show the profile and invite corrections — corrections are the highest-value input this skill gets.
- Draft under the profile. Apply the decision patterns first, the voice second. Where the new piece demands a judgment the samples never made, make the closest-fit call, mark it inline with ⚠, and add it to the list.
- Deliver the couldn't-infer list. Each entry: the gap, the guess made, the one question that would close it. This list shrinking over sessions IS the apprenticeship.
- Offer the profile as a file (
understudy-profile.md) so the study cost is paid once.
Output Format
## How you think (from N samples — correct me)
[Falsifiable pattern lines, each citing its sample]
## The draft (as your understudy)
[The piece, ⚠ marks on inferred judgment calls]
## What I couldn't infer about you
| Gap | The guess I made | The question that settles it |
## Keep this
[The profile file, ready to save and reuse]
Quality Checks
- Every profile line is falsifiable and evidence-cited — zero horoscope lines ("values clarity")
- The draft's ⚠ marks match the couldn't-infer list one-to-one
- At least one profile line captures something the user doesn't do — omissions are half of judgment
- With fewer than 3 samples, say the profile is thin and mark confidence accordingly rather than padding it
- The output invites correction explicitly — a profile the user never corrects is a profile that stopped learning
Anti-Patterns
- Do not do tone cosplay — matching vocabulary while inventing judgment is the exact failure this skill replaces
- Do not silently guess on uncovered judgment calls; the ⚠ + list is the contract
- Do not flatter the samples — if two samples contradict each other, surface the contradiction and ask which one is current
- Do not use the profile to impersonate the user to third parties without their framing — the understudy drafts FOR the principal, who remains the byline and the approver
Related
[[api-for-yourself]] is the outward-facing sibling (how others work with you); this is inward (how you think). Store the profile per the [[clone-brief]] and Brain conventions.