Prose

Writing SWS Prose

Load this skill whenever writing or editing prose for this project: documentation in docs/, READMEs, design docs, PR descriptions, issue bodies, commit message bodies, or any other human-readable markdown.

When to load: editing any file under docs/, writing a commit message body, drafting a PR description or issue body, or producing any user-facing markdown for the SWS project.

Writing Style

• Avoid ambiguous characters: Do not use ambiguous Unicode characters, homoglyphs, and confusables in identifiers, code, code comments/docs or user input as they can lead to security issues.
• Be fact-focused: State what things are and what they do
• Avoid buzzwords: No "leverage", "synergy", "paradigm", etc.
• Avoid fluff: Every sentence should convey information
• Avoid weasel words: No "very", "really", "quite", "somewhat"
• Avoid dramatic terms: No "critical", "crucial", "vital", "essential" unless something will actually break
• Avoid figurative metaphors: Pick the literal word for the thing, not the analogy. "Blazing fast" → "sub-millisecond latency" or "serves files at line rate". "Battle-tested" → "used in production since 2019". Other recurring offenders: "under the hood" (just describe what's there), "out of the box" (just say "by default"), "first-class" (say what's actually supported). If you can't replace the metaphor with a literal noun or verb without losing meaning, you probably don't know what you mean yet.
• Be direct: Say what you mean without hedging
• Use concrete examples: Show, don't tell. Include CLI invocations and HTTP response snippets
• Use active voice: "SWS appends security headers to the response" not "Security headers are appended by SWS"
• Use present tense: Describe how the system works now, not how it was designed or how it will work
• Document current behavior only: Omit historical decisions, deprecated approaches, and planned future work

Examples

Bad: "This feature is critical for ensuring optimal web server performance."

Good: "Static compression serves pre-compressed .br files from disk with zero CPU overhead, avoiding on-the-fly compression."

Bad: "SWS leverages advanced algorithms to enhance delivery."

Good: "SWS uses accept-encoding header negotiation to select the best compression algorithm (zstd, brotli, gzip, deflate) supported by the client."

Bad: "## Features that work out of the box"

Good: "## Enabled by default"

Document Structure

• Start with what the thing is
• Explain why it exists (what problem it solves)
• Explain what it does
• Show how to use it (if applicable)
• Provide examples (CLI invocations, config snippets, HTTP headers)

Feature Documentation

When documenting an SWS feature in docs/content/features/:

1. One sentence summary at the top of what the feature does
2. Default state: Whether enabled by default, and the flag to toggle it
3. CLI example: A static-web-server invocation with the relevant flags
4. Behavior: What happens when enabled vs disabled
5. Related features: Cross-link to features that interact (e.g., compression-static → compression)

Terminology

• SWS: Static Web Server (the project). Use "SWS" after the first mention
• Pre-compressed / static compression: Serving .br/.gz/.zst files from disk
• On-the-fly / dynamic compression: Compressing responses in real-time
• Root directory: The --root directory from which files are served
• Base path: The canonicalized root directory used for path containment checks