Strategist Voice

Strategist voice

The house style for analyst-grade writing: third-person register with sparing first person, no em dashes, no "not X, not Y, not Z" negation cascades, numbered footnote citations instead of inline source parentheticals, specific opinion-signalling phrases, and topic-forward paragraphs. It is modelled on the voice patterns of Damodaran's Musings on Markets and Thompson's Stratechery. Apply it in the final consolidation step, when working notes become a publishable document; it is not a drafting aid and it does not check readability or slop (see readability-check and slop-detector).

When to Use

• Consolidating working notes into a finished long-form strategist, analyst, or forecast report.
• The document must read as written by a senior human analyst rather than an assistant.
• A draft is full of em dashes, negation cascades, inline (Source: ...) citations, or Strategist inference: prefixes.
• Opinion needs to be signalled with graded conviction rather than hedged or asserted flatly.
• The user asks for the house style, the analyst voice, or a research-note register.

The two reference voices

The house style synthesises two analyst-blogger voices:

• Aswath Damodaran (Musings on Markets): academic-conversational, rigorous frameworks delivered in a personal voice; first-person opinion stated openly; historical or philosophical hooks; data woven into prose without footnote interruption.
• Ben Thompson (Stratechery): counterintuitive openings; named frameworks earning their analytical keep; punchy declaratives alternated with subordinate-clause sentences; sources named in prose; opinion signalled through specific phrasing.

Both write at a sentence level that no assistant default produces. The rules below capture what they share. Where their habits do not serve a strategist report (notably their heavy use of em dashes), this skill deliberately diverges.

Hard rules

The consolidating agent must enforce these. They are non-negotiable. Run the checklist at the end of this file before treating the report as done.

1. Zero em dashes. Use a period, semicolon, comma, parenthesis, or rewrite the sentence. Both reference authors use em dashes liberally; this report format does not.
2. Zero "not X, not Y, not Z" negation cascades. The pattern "the canvas is the source of truth, not the codebase, not a doc, not a slide" is banned. Replace with a positive declarative, or with one specific contrast, or omit.
3. Zero Strategist inference: prefixes. Signal synthesis through phrasing (see "Opinion signalling" below).
4. Footnoted citations only. Use claim text.[^7] in the body with [^7]: Source, URL in a bibliography section. Never inline [Source: Org, URL] or (Source: Org, URL).
5. No "It's worth noting that..." hollow openings. Either state the thing directly or omit. Compare: Damodaran uses "it is worth asking" because the question leads somewhere; "it is worth noting" rarely does.
6. No tl;dr-style closers. No "In conclusion," "Ultimately," "To summarize." The verdict section is the conclusion; the rest of the report should not summarise itself in passing.
7. Bulleted lists only where the structure earns them. Strategic bet lists, surface cards, metric lists, and the bibliography are correct uses. A list as a substitute for an argument-in-prose paragraph is incorrect.
8. No "X is doing Y because Z" as a primary sentence shape repeated across paragraphs. It reads as machine output. Vary.
9. No undefined strategy jargon. Terms like the wedge, flywheel, TAM, NDR, aggregation theory, platform-shaped, land-and-expand, moat, take rate, attach rate must be defined on first appearance, or rewritten away. Define inline (a brief parenthetical, an appositive phrase, or a setup sentence immediately before the term). If defining the term breaks the prose flow, restructure the sentence to avoid the term entirely. The reader is a smart generalist, not a strategy consultant. A term used twice without ever being defined is the single clearest signal that the writer has copied a register rather than thought through the argument.
10. No abstract X-shaped / Y-shaped labels doing analytical work. Phrases like "the vision is platform-shaped, not feature-shaped" sound analytical but explain nothing. Replace with the concrete description the label was standing in for. Example: "the credible vision at this stage is a base layer that other products build on, not a single feature."

Opinion signalling

Replace Strategist inference: with specific phrasing. The strength scale runs from tentative to high conviction:

• Tentative: "appears to," "the evidence suggests," "perhaps," "arguably"
• Reasoned: "the more likely reading is," "this analyst's reading is," "in our reading," "the more interesting question is"
• Confident: "without question," "the evidence is clear," "this is the central bet," "the reasons are simple"
• Provocative: "it is worth asking," "the bet is wrong," "the more obvious explanation"

Use first person ("we," "this analyst's reading," "in our reading") sparingly. Once or twice per long section is correct; once per paragraph is wrong. Reserve it for the genuine judgment calls.

Paragraph and sentence structure

• Topic-forward. Lead the paragraph with the claim. Then elaborate, qualify, support.
• Vary sentence length deliberately. Alternate three- and four-word declaratives with longer subordinate-clause sentences. A page of similarly shaped sentences is the single clearest tell of machine-generated prose.
• Short paragraphs. Three or four sentences is plenty. Long paragraphs are usually buried arguments.

Opening paragraphs

Use one of these three patterns. None of them define the company.

1. Counterintuitive frame. Name a tension or paradox, then pivot to the subject. Thompson's "Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing" opens by observing that CEO eulogies typically occur at retirement rather than death.
2. Historical or philosophical comparison. Set up a broad observation, then place the subject inside it. Damodaran's "An Ode to Restraint" opens by contrasting empire builders with quiet contributors throughout history.
3. Specific data point with a take on it. A single number or fact pointed enough that the reader wants the analysis behind it.

Banned openings: "Company X is a Y that does Z," definitions of the product category, restatements of the directive.

Citation form

Numbered footnotes. In the body:

Figma's Q4 2025 revenue grew 40% year on year.[^7]

In the bibliography section at the end of the report, grouped by source type:

**Primary company material**
[^1]: Figma — How Figma's multiplayer technology works — https://www.figma.com/blog/...
[^7]: Figma Investor Relations — Q4 2025 results — https://investor.figma.com/...

**Founder and executive voices**
[^12]: Lenny's Podcast with Dylan Field, October 2025 — https://...

**Engineering and architecture material**
[^18]: ...

**Secondary analysis**
[^24]: ...

Footnote markers go after the sentence punctuation. Never two markers on the same fact. Never a parenthetical citation inside a sentence. The dashes in bibliography lines are the one place the em dash is tolerated; they are not prose.

Examples

Load style-examples.md with skill_view("strategist-voice", file_path="references/style-examples.md") for annotated good-and-bad rewrites of opening paragraphs, opinion-signalled sentences, negation-cascade fixes, citation forms, and synthesis statements.

Final-pass checklist

Copy this into the working response when consolidating the final report. Tick each item before declaring the report finished.

Strategist-voice final pass:
- [ ] Zero em dashes in the final document
- [ ] Zero "not X, not Y, not Z" negation cascades
- [ ] Zero `Strategist inference:` prefixes (or any variation thereof)
- [ ] Zero inline `[Source: ...]` or `(Source: ...)` citations
- [ ] Zero "It's worth noting" hollow openings
- [ ] Zero "In conclusion / Ultimately / To summarize" closers
- [ ] The opening paragraph uses one of the three permitted patterns
- [ ] At least three opinion-signalling phrases (from the list above) appear in the synthesis section
- [ ] Sentence length varies visibly within paragraphs
- [ ] First person ("we," "this analyst's reading") used at most twice per major section
- [ ] Bibliography is grouped by source type and uses numbered footnote anchors that match in-text markers
- [ ] Every strategy-jargon term ("wedge", "flywheel", "TAM", "NDR", "moat", "attach rate", "X-shaped" labels, etc.) is either defined on first use or rewritten away
- [ ] No abstract X-shaped / Y-shaped label is doing the analytical work that a concrete description should be doing

If any box cannot be ticked, return to the draft and fix before producing the final markdown.

Verification

Run search_files over the finished document for the em dash character, Strategist inference, [Source:, (Source:, It's worth noting, In conclusion, Ultimately, and To summarize. Zero hits outside the bibliography is the bar. Then hand the document to slop-detector and readability-check; this skill's pass is complete only when those two also pass.