guerrilla2799 Writing Quality
A gate, not a suggestion. Any prose leaving the building passes through here first.
When to use
- Automatically, on every piece of prose headed to an external reader
- Any copy inside a deliverable, including copy presented as an option or a proposal
- When somebody asks whether something reads as machine-written
Framing does not exempt text. Copy labeled "suggested", "draft", or "just an option" is still copy somebody will paste into an external surface, and it gets the same pass.
Inputs
- Reads:
workspace/agents/context/voice.mdif it exists, otherwise the defaults below - Needs from user: nothing
Workflow
1. Strip the structural tells
These patterns are the clearest machine signatures in business prose, and they survive most editing passes because they read as confident.
| Pattern | Why it fails |
|---|---|
| "It's not X, it's Y" | A rhetorical reveal that usually replaces an argument |
| "X didn't do Y, it revealed Z" | The same move wearing a different coat |
| "The real X is..." | Announces insight rather than delivering it |
| Rule-of-three lists everywhere | Real thinking is rarely three parallel items |
| "In today's fast-paced world" | Says nothing. Delete the sentence, never replace it |
| A closing paragraph restating the opening | Padding. Stop at the last real point |
| Symmetrical two-part sentences on repeat | Rhythm that reads as generated after three of them |
2. Strip the vocabulary
Delete or replace: unlock, leverage as a verb, supercharge, seamless, robust, holistic, synergy, game-changing, cutting-edge, best-in-class, elevate, empower, harness, navigate the landscape, at the end of the day, dive deep, double click, and any sentence containing "in an era of".
"Leverage" as a noun meaning negotiating power is fine. The verb is not.
3. Fix the punctuation habits
- No em dashes. A period, a comma, or a rewrite. This is a hard rule
- No semicolons in prose. Two sentences
- Sparse parentheses. More than one aside per paragraph means the sentence structure is wrong
- No exclamation marks in business prose
4. Cut the hedging
Delete: "it's worth noting that", "it's important to remember", "arguably", "in many ways", "to some extent", and stacked qualifiers. One qualifier is precision. Three is a lack of a position.
5. Cut the summary of what was just said
If a paragraph restates the previous paragraph in different words, delete it. Machine prose summarizes compulsively, and the summary is always the weaker version.
6. Read the first line honestly
If the opening sentence could introduce any document on this topic, it is not an opening. Start at the specific claim.
7. Strip invisible characters
Zero-width characters, bidirectional marks, tag characters, and exotic spaces travel invisibly through copy-paste and show up in other people's tooling. Scan and strip them as the last step, after wording is final.
Report the count.
Output
- Returns the cleaned prose
- Prints the receipt:
writing-quality: <n> structural tells, <n> vocabulary, <n> punctuation fixed
invisible-characters: <n> stripped | none
Rules & quality bar
- This gate never gets skipped on external-facing prose, whatever the framing
- No em dashes, no semicolons in prose. Hard rules
- The receipt is mandatory. A missing receipt means the gate did not run, never that it passed silently
- Wording is final before the invisible-character strip, so the strip changes nothing visible
- Do not soften a claim while cleaning it. Cleaning is not hedging
- Delete rather than replace filler. A cut sentence is better than a rewritten empty one
Related skills
- Runs inside:
artifact-evalas its first gate - Reads: the voice module from
context-portfolio