Movemental Prose

Audit and/or fix Movemental prose: $ARGUMENTS

$ARGUMENTS should be a file path, pasted prose, or a directory. Prefix with audit: for diagnosis only, fix: to apply in-place edits for Critical/High findings, or omit for audit-then-fix. If no argument, ask what to audit.

Before you start

Read these every invocation (they change between runs):

1. Target piece — including its frontmatter (audience_tier, canon_section, slug, author).
2. docs/content/terminology-registers.md — the endorsed / tolerated / flagged term lists. Source of truth, edited by hand. Re-read on every run.
3. A representative exemplar — docs/articles/the-fragmentation-tax.md for opening, grounding, and structural diagnosis; docs/articles/sandbox/the-three-kinds-of-value.md for named-role grounding. These are the reference cadence.

Determine the audience arm from frontmatter (audience_tier, or inferred from path: sandbox/ = executive; manuscript-ordered/ = book; others from the piece itself).

What this skill is not

• Not alan-voice / article-audit — those enforce Alan Hirsch's Christocentric + APEST voice for the sibling repo. If the piece has heavy Jesus/Kingdom/Gospel density and lives in or references the alan-hirsch corpus, stop and recommend alan-voice.
• Not movemental-narrative-audit — that runs on argument-level alignment (two intelligences, six stages, pathways). Do not re-litigate those here.
• Not a line editor that rewrites for elegance. Josh's voice has cadence and rhetorical structure. This skill catches when those devices stack into AI-telltale patterns — not when they appear at natural rates.

The six checks

Run each in order. For each, quote the passage, mark severity, and propose a specific rewrite. Severity: Critical = must fix before publish; High = fix unless the author overrides; Medium = suggest.

1. Opening clarity — Critical

Read the first 60–90 words. By the end of them, can a tired executive director answer all three?

• Who is this for? A named role or situation should be on the page.
• What concrete situation is in view? A scene, an artefact, a real pressure — not only a mood.
• Why keep reading for ten more minutes? The stakes should be legible.

If any are missing, this is Critical.

Do not flag literary openings that answer the three questions inside the first paragraph (e.g., the-fragmentation-tax.md opens with a donor scene and lands the stakes by word 80).

Do flag openings that spend the first paragraph in mood, philosophy, or atmosphere before naming a reader or a situation.

Repair move: Rewrite the opening to lead with a named role under specific pressure, or a single concrete artefact. Mood can stay as a half-sentence, not as the structural opener.

2. Bare cross-references — High

Grep the piece for markdown links whose surrounding sentence is See [Title](path) or similar bare pointer. For each:

• Load-bearing link — the sentence names what the reader finds there and why it matters here. Keep.
• Bare pointer — the sentence is effectively a footnote. Demote to an end-of-piece block.

If a piece has more than two bare pointers, that is a pattern, not a slip. Collapse them into a single ## Where this connects section at the close, using this template:

## Where this connects

- **[Title](path)** — one sentence on what the reader finds there and why it matters.
- **[Title](path)** — …

Inside the body, keep only links that the sentence itself uses to advance the argument. The exemplar: the-fragmentation-tax.md has zero inline cross-references and remains complete. The counter-exemplar: the-movemental-thesis.md has ~20 bare See [Title] pointers — that is the pattern to collapse.

3. Unanchored abstractions — High

For each specialised or capitalised noun in the piece (fragmentation tax, signal collapse, citation economy, stewardship, formation, two intelligences, movement-shaped imagination, orbits and infra channels, etc.), check: is there a concrete anchor within three sentences? An anchor is one of:

• A named role acting in a specific situation
• A specific artefact (a donor note, a board packet, a thank-you email, a sermon series, a four-hundred-piece archive)
• A number, date, or location
• A named pressure (a board review, a donor fall-off, a staff turnover event)

Abstractions stacked without anchors read as AI. One abstraction per paragraph is fine; three abstractions in a row without an anchor is a flag.

Repair move: Insert a concrete anchor using this pattern: <abstract claim>. A <specific role> <specific action>, and <specific consequence>. Or cut the abstraction if it was not load-bearing.

4. Drift vocabulary — High

Cross-check against the Flagged list in docs/content/terminology-registers.md. For each flagged term found:

• Count occurrences across the piece.
• Apply the replacement specified in the registers file (e.g., "load-bearing" → plain restatement after the second use).
• If the term is endorsed, move on.
• If tolerated, confirm the piece glosses it on first use.

The registers file is the extensible list. Do not flag terms not on that list; do surface any repeating specialised noun as a candidate for Josh's review at the end of the audit ("Terms to consider adding to registers:").

5. AI-cadence clustering — Medium

Josh's voice has real rhythm. Tricolons, antithesis, and aphoristic sentences appear naturally. The flag is clustering, not individual use.

In any single paragraph, count AI-signature devices:

• Tricolon — three parallel short sentences or clauses. "It fills slots. It satisfies calendars. It disappears."
• Antithesis / "Not X. Y." — one sentence negates, the next affirms. "Sincerity is not the scarce resource. Structure is."
• Aphoristic closer — a short italicised or blockquoted sentence summarising the paragraph. "The order is the framework."
• Meta-adjective stacks — "load-bearing claim," "structural pressure," "decisive layers," "moral theater" used as compressed shorthand.

Flag a paragraph when three or more devices appear in it. Flag a piece when an aphoristic blockquote closer appears more than once outside the final section.

Repair move: Rewrite the weakest instance in the paragraph into plain declarative prose. The paragraph's rhythm should still work — if it doesn't, the rhythm was doing work the argument should have done.

6. Audience-mismatch vocabulary — Medium

Identify the audience arm (church, nonprofit, institution, movement leader) from frontmatter or context. Cross-check against the Audience-mismatch flags section of the registers file. For each mismatched term, either:

• Replace with the sector-appropriate equivalent (registers file suggests defaults).
• Swap the example entirely (a sermon series → a research brief; a major gift → a program renewal).
• Cut the aside if it does not serve the main argument.

Preserve ecumenical phrasing — Movemental's own register is deliberately multi-sector. The flag is when a piece drifts into single-sector dialect without acknowledgement.

Output

Audit mode

# Prose audit: <title or path>

**Readiness:** PUBLISH READY / NEEDS REVISION / MAJOR REVISION
**Audience:** <arm from frontmatter>
**Word count:** <n>

## Findings

### 1. Opening clarity — <CRITICAL / OK>
<quoted first 90 words>

<diagnosis: which of who-for / what-situation / why-now is missing>

**Rewrite:**
<concrete proposed opening, ~60-90 words>

### 2. Bare cross-references — <HIGH / OK>
<count> total. Worst offenders:

- Paragraph N: "See [Title](path)" — demote.
- …

**Recommended Read-next block:**
<the collapsed ## Where this connects block, one line per link>

### 3. Unanchored abstractions — <HIGH / OK>
- "<abstraction>" (para N) — no anchor within three sentences. Proposed anchor: <specific>
- …

### 4. Drift vocabulary — <HIGH / OK>
| Term | Count | Action |
| --- | --- | --- |
| load-bearing | 4 | Replace second, third, fourth occurrence with plain restatement. |
| … | | |

**Terms to consider adding to registers:** <any recurring specialised noun not on the list>

### 5. AI-cadence clustering — <MEDIUM / OK>
- Paragraph N: 3 devices (tricolon + antithesis + meta-adjective). Proposed cut: <which one and what to>.
- Aphoristic blockquote closers: <count>. Keep only the final one.

### 6. Audience-mismatch — <MEDIUM / OK>
- "<term>" in para N — mismatched for <arm>. Replace with "<suggested>".

---

## Priority fix list (max 10)

1. [CRITICAL] Opening — rewrite per above.
2. [HIGH] Cross-references — demote 11 to Where this connects block.
3. …

## Terms Josh should triage for the registers file

- <any new drift candidates surfaced>

Fix mode

For every Critical and High finding, apply Edit calls in place. Medium findings go into a "Suggestions not applied" list at the end.

After edits, report:

# Fixes applied: <path>

- Rewrote opening (Critical)
- Collapsed N bare cross-references into Where this connects (High)
- Anchored N abstractions with concrete examples (High)
- Replaced N drift term instances per registers (High)

## Suggestions not applied (Medium)
- Paragraph N: AI-cadence cluster — consider cutting antithesis in sentence 2.
- …

## Terms Josh should consider adding to docs/content/terminology-registers.md
- <term> — seen <count> times across <pieces>.

Pre-return checklist

• Read the registers file this run (not cached from memory).
• Audience arm identified from frontmatter or context.
• All six checks run; each quoted passage is real text from the piece.
• Every proposed rewrite preserves Josh's argument and voice — no flattening to neutral explainer tone.
• No rewrite introduces new drift vocabulary or new unanchored abstractions.
• In fix mode, every Edit traces to a specific finding.
• New drift candidates surfaced for Josh's triage at the end.

Design notes

• The registers file is the only extensible surface. Add terms there; this skill will read them next run.
• Budgets are soft and paragraph-scoped, not per-piece. Clustering is the signal, not raw counts.
• When in doubt, preserve the author's voice. Flagging a pattern costs little; a bad auto-rewrite costs trust.