Engineering Writing

Engineering writing

Write clear, brief, accurate and useful engineering prose in Australian English. Cut first. Add only what serves the reader's job and belongs in this document.

This skill is a specialization of the natural-writing hub: it owns codebase/README/commit/PR artefact types and links to the hub for the Australian English default, the anti-AI taxonomy and the condense pass. See references/process.md, references/style-standard.md and references/engineer-voice.md for where each hub link applies.

It owns thesis and paper LaTeX command and layout invariants. Academic prose, chapter structure, research voice, citation discipline, claim wording and thesis AI tells stay with the hub's academic prose reference.

Workflow

1. Name the audience, prior knowledge, required action or decision, and format constraint. If the reader's job is unclear, flag it before drafting.
2. Choose one relevant pattern: document patterns for codebase/short-form prose, requirements and planning for already-decided pre-build content, architecture and communication for approved designs, ADRs, presentations and briefs, or academic artefacts for thesis and paper LaTeX command and layout invariants. Do not load more than one.
3. Structure before sentences: front-load the point, use decision-oriented headings and one idea or requirement per unit, then move wrong-home material.
4. Lock facts, logic, stance, evidence, obligations, behaviour, identifiers, paths, commands, flags, parameters, keys, error codes, numbers, units, dates, citations and quoted terms.
5. Revise in separate structure, accuracy, clarity/concision, voice and Australian-English passes. Load only the needed section from process, style standard, engineer voice or the natural-writing skill's Australian English default; use sentence mechanics or sources only for a specific problem. Load the hub anti-AI taxonomy and condense pass from the natural-writing skill alongside engineer-voice.md and process.md respectively.
6. Optional, reader-facing prose only: consider a final voice pass by the model under human-facing final polish in the advisory model dossier. Never required; the chair owns substance, so diff the return for changed facts.

Preserve technical meaning and evidence altitude. Distinguish observation from interpretation; attach numbers to comparatives. Verify every package, API, version, flag and URL against code or documentation, otherwise mark [FLAG: verify]. Never invent facts to fill a document. Keep genuine caveats and honest negatives while cutting padding, marketing language, AI tells, instruction-leaking absence tombstones and internal process language from reader-facing prose. Match existing repository conventions without copying signature phrases.

For condensation, follow the reference stop and integrity checks and report the before/after word delta. Review mode returns severity, evidence, impact and fix; rewrite mode returns text first; final scrub makes defect fixes only.

Flag unverifiable support, audience dependence, domain-required terms, or a cut that would drop an obligation. Use [FLAG: verify source], [FLAG: define audience], [FLAG: preserve exact term] or [FLAG: shortening drops obligation] where applicable. Do not smooth uncertainty away.