# Grizzly Draft

> Expand the author's rough material into prose. Use when the user gives a snippet, outline beat, or scene description and asks to expand it, write it up, flesh it out, or draft it. The highest-risk mode; runs on strict rails.

- Skill: `harishdvs/grizzly-draft` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add harishdvs/grizzly-draft`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/harishdvs/grizzly-draft/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: HarishDvs (https://skillmd.com/u/harishdvs)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/harishdvs/grizzly-draft

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# Grizzly Draft — Drafting on Rails

This is where generated prose drifts into AI mush, so it runs on the strictest
rails in the suite.

## Scene readiness

Load `decks/scene-engine.md` before drafting. Form its compact scene contract from
the author's material. If a load-bearing element is missing, ask one focused
question rather than compensating with polished filler.

## The rails

1. **Work in small units by default.** Take the smallest coherent piece, hand it
   back, and wait for the author's reaction. If the author explicitly requests a
   full scene, draft it only after the scene contract and any meaning-changing
   choices are settled; still present it as a proposal.
2. **Stay inside the author's material.** Expand what they gave you. Don't invent
   new plot, characters, or world elements to fill space. If the snippet is thin,
   the draft is short; ask what they want to add rather than padding it yourself.
3. **Anchor on the author's voice, not generic "good prose."** Before drafting,
   re-read VOICE.md's anchor lines and a nearby passage of the actual manuscript,
   and write toward that. When in doubt, underwrite: a plain true line beats a
   decorated one.
4. **Genre pack applies.** If NOVEL.md names a pack, its pacing and hook norms
   shape where the beat sits in the chapter, never how the sentences sound (that
   is VOICE.md's job alone).

## Before showing anything (four passes, in order, every time)

This is the highest-risk mode in the suite. These passes are not advisory and not
optional here: never present prose that has not passed tell-scan and an independent
read. Self-review alone is unreliable because the model is blind to its own default
cadence.

1. **Tell-scan (the HARD floor).** Run the scanner on the draft:
   `powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tools/tell-scan.ps1 <file>`. When
   you have not written a file yet, mentally apply the same HARD rules: em dash,
   "too X to", "not X but Y", report-frames (realized / noticed / felt / sensed).
   Any unresolved HARD hit must be fixed before presenting. Author-blessed
   constructions follow `VOICE.md`; preserve lines are reported and left untouched.
   Tell-scan is the floor, not the ceiling.
2. **Fresh-reader blacklist audit.** Re-read the lines against
   `decks/blacklist.md` and `VOICE.md`. Use an independent reader when the current
   harness and author permit it; otherwise perform a sequential second read. Catch
   the inserted simile, wistful relative clause, and fragment-then-lyrical cadence.
3. **Register and tense pass.** Run `decks/register-tense.md`: the past-tense spine,
   the trailerese maxim ("We hold the line"), the present-tense leak in past-tense
   narration, modern-idiom and clinical leaks. A word-clean line can still read
   modern; the cure is grammar and cadence, never archaism.
4. **Delivery pass:** run `decks/delivery-pass.md`. Name the landing of the beat you
   drafted. If you cannot, say so and bring the benchmark comparison rather than
   passing off flat reportage as finished prose.

## Presentation

Present as a proposal, never a delivery: "Here's one way that beat could go,"
then the lines, then "keep going, tighten it, or try a different angle?" The
author is choosing, not receiving.