Snitch Focusedcopy

Snitch: Focused Copy

A structure system for persuasive copy, built on CLOSER — a widely taught six-stage sales-call structure, adapted to written pages (Clarify, Label, Overview, Sell, Explain, Reinforce). A live sales call and a landing page do the same job — take a stranger from "why am I here" to "I'm in" — but a call has a human on the other end asking questions and handling objections turn by turn. A page has none of that: every stage has to happen through copy and layout alone, in the order the reader scrolls. That's the adaptation this skill makes: six stages a rep would walk through out loud, rebuilt as six jobs a page's sections can do. The default sequence is a diagnostic aid, not a mandatory scroll order.

Most pages that "aren't converting" already have four or five of the six stages somewhere on them. They're just out of order (mechanism explained before the reader has a reason to care), duplicated (three sections all doing Overview, none doing Reinforce), or missing outright (no stage ever tells the reader "you're the right fit," so unqualified traffic never self-selects and never leaves either). The fix is usually reordering and trimming what's already there, not a rewrite.

Scope

Applies to: landing pages, pricing pages, sales/waitlist pages, onboarding pitches, cold emails, ad copy, VSL/UGC video scripts, pitch decks — any single piece of copy or short funnel whose job is to move a stranger toward a specific decision.

Never applies to: technical docs, READMEs, error messages, or anything that should read as neutral instruction, not persuasion — hand off by calling the Skill tool with "snitch-docwriter". Not a substitute for snitch-marketing (search/AI-citation/schema mechanics) or snitch-ux (interaction design, usability, dark-pattern review across a whole product) — this skill only owns whether a specific piece of persuasive copy tells its story in the right order, using true claims.

snitch-marketing's persuasion-architecture category also touches this territory but does a different job: it's a whole-site, evidence-tiered research audit that scores the site's persuasion surfaces against academic literature. This skill doesn't score or research — it applies one named, practical framework (CLOSER) to reorder and rewrite a specific page or funnel directly. Reach for that category when you want a holistic, cited audit of a whole site; reach for this skill when you just need one page's persuasion arc fixed.

The six stages

Adapted for written copy, not a live call:

• C — Clarify. State plainly what this is and why the reader is here, in language they could repeat back. On a page this is almost always the headline + subhead. If a stranger can't answer "what is this and is it for me?" from the first screen, nothing later matters.
• L — Label. Tell the reader whether they're the right fit before you try to sell them anything — a short "this is for you if / not the fit if" block works well. A call does this by asking questions; a page has to do it by stating who it's for and, ideally, who it isn't. Disqualifying some readers is what makes the qualification credible.
• O — Overview the pain. Name the specific situation the reader is in, in words they'd use themselves, before presenting the solution. Concrete and recognizable beats generic ("we solve inefficiency"). This is where a fair, specific comparison against the status quo or a named alternative belongs.
• S — Sell the outcome, not the mechanism. The shorthand: sell the vacation, not the plane ride — lead with the transformation the reader gets, then explain how it works. The most common bug in SaaS copy is doing this backward — opening with architecture, model names, or feature lists before the reader has a reason to care what powers any of it. Outcome first is a starting point. Technical buyers may need compatibility or mechanism early to establish fit; material price, limits, and risks must precede commitment.
  • The mechanism explanation still belongs on the page. It answers "how" for a reader who understands "why". Put it earlier when technical eligibility is the reader's first decision.
• E — Explain away objections. Answer the specific reasons a reader would talk themselves out of the decision — price, trust, switching cost, "what's the catch," "is this too good to be true" — proactively. An FAQ is the natural home for this stage, but only if the questions are the reader's real objections, not softballs.
• R — Reinforce the decision. At the point of action, confirm they're making a smart choice. Real urgency or scarcity if it's true, a plain restatement of the deal, social proof if you have it. This is the stage most pages skip entirely, going straight from features to a bare CTA button with nothing reinforcing the click.

A single page rarely needs to force all six stages into six separate sections — a strong hero can do Clarify and half of Sell at once, and a long page can spread the arc across several screens or, for a funnel, several separate pages (ad → landing page → pricing page → email). Judge the reader's actual decision path. Combine, move, or omit stages with a reason; missing stage labels alone are not defects. Never invent pain, urgency, reassurance, or features to complete an arc. An informational next step need not resemble a purchase CTA.

The anti-fabrication gate (read this before writing any copy)

Every factual claim, in any stage, needs an adequate source before it is written down. Use inspected implementation or terms, or explicit user-supplied facts labeled as supplied. A page establishes what is advertised, not necessarily what is implemented. Negative grep results over a partial scope cannot establish universal absence or unlimited service. This is not optional and it is not a style note — it is the difference between a persuasive page and a false one. Concretely:

• Before writing an absence claim ("no X," "never Y," "unlimited Z"), search the actual implementation (code, config, contract, pricing sheet) for whatever would make that claim false. A limit that exists anywhere in the system means the claim is false, even if it's generous. State the true, favorable version instead ("a substantial 5-hour window," not "no 5-hour windows") — being honest about a real limit that happens to be generous is still a strong claim; a false absence is a liability the moment anyone checks.
• Before writing a comparison ("more than X," "faster than Y," "cheaper than the alternative"), confirm the comparison is one you can actually source — a real price, a real measured number, a real doc. When the source is a competitor's page rather than this product's own, cite the URL actually fetched this run, with the date. If you can't verify it, either drop the specific comparison or soften it to what you can stand behind.
• Before writing a number (a cap, a percentage, a count, a price), read it out of the source of truth (config, database schema, pricing table) rather than recalling it from memory or from other marketing copy, which may itself be stale or wrong.
• When a claim can't be verified in the time available, prefer omission or a hedged, true statement over a specific, unverified one. A vaguer honest sentence beats a punchier false one every time — the reader who catches one fabricated claim stops trusting all the others.
• This gate applies to editing existing copy too, not just new copy: an audit pass should flag any claim already on the page that isn't backed by something checkable, the same way it flags a missing stage.

Execution flow

1. Identify the copy in scope — one page, a funnel of several pages, or a single email/ad/script. Read it in full before touching anything.
2. Map the current structure. Go section by section (or paragraph by paragraph for short copy) and label each one with the CLOSER stage it's actually doing, or "none" if it isn't doing any of the six jobs (nav, footer, legal — that's fine, not everything has to serve the arc).
3. Diagnose against the map:
   • An unaddressed decision need = missing; an absent stage without a reader need is Skip.
   • Out of order requires evidence of a prerequisite the reader lacks, not a violation of stage numbering. Keep eligibility and material terms early when needed.
   • Imbalanced requires redundant copy obscuring a necessary decision, not section counts.
   • Separate a contradicted claim or a demonstrated lack of required substantiation from unknown truth. Missing access alone is verification Skip, not proof of deception. Omit unverified additions from proposed copy; identify what would unblock reuse.
4. Verify every claim you intend to write or keep, per the gate above, against the actual product/codebase/pricing source before it goes on the page.
5. Propose the fix as a stage-labeled outline first — the new section order with each section's CLOSER stage marked, and a one-line note on what copy changes (if any) each section needs. Get this outline right before touching prose; most of the fix is reordering sections that already exist, not writing new ones.
6. Apply the edits only when changes were requested. An audit or outline-only request ends with the report/proposal; it does not authorize file edits. When authorized: Reorder sections, tighten or add copy only where a stage is genuinely missing or weak, and leave design, visual style, and brand voice untouched — this is a structure and claims pass, not a redesign. When editing code (a marketing site's route/ component files), keep diffs minimal: reorder existing components before rewriting their internals.
7. Verify the result renders correctly if it's a live page (start the dev server, view it) before reporting the work as complete.

Outcomes

Every stage and every claim gets one of three outcomes, not just a Finding:

• Finding — a demonstrated decision-path gap, harmful ordering/repetition, contradicted claim, or missing required substantiation. Unavailable verification alone is Skip. See the format below.
• Pass-with-evidence — a stage is present and in the right order: name the stage and quote the section that does its job.
• Skip-with-reason — a claim can't be checked against the available source (the pricing table isn't in the workspace, the live page needs a login): say what's missing and what would unblock the check, rather than silently dropping it.

Finding format

• Stage: which of C / L / O / S / E / R the section is (or should be), or Missing / Out of order / Unverified claim for the diagnosis categories above.
• Evidence: file:line (source) or URL + selector (a live page), with the exact current copy.
• Risk: what it concretely costs — a reader who can't self-qualify keeps reading past copy that isn't for them; mechanism-first copy loses skimmers before they know why to care; a missing Reinforce stage leaves last-second doubt unanswered at the CTA; an unsupported claim can mislead a decision, but unknown does not mean proven false.
• Fix: the specific reorder or copy fix, with the corrected text and, for an unverified claim, the source that was checked to confirm the replacement is true.

Files

• references/worked-example.md — a full before/after CLOSER pass on a fictional SaaS pricing page: the stage map of the original, the diagnosis, and the reordered result.