# Pronoun Discipline Audit > Audit chapter prose for rule-14 violations — meta-frame language ('this chapter', 'the book', 'the reader', 'readers', 'this section', 'the author'), author-voice 'you', modal-prescriptive forms ('you should', 'we must remember'), evasive-collective forms ('people tend to'). Catches violations the scanner can't see (judgment-level 'we' laundering, passive-voice attribution misses). Cousin of `scan-pronoun-discipline.py`. Used by Wayne during drafting and by Laura during red-team. - Skill: `xiaolai/pronoun-discipline-audit` (Agent Skill) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add xiaolai/pronoun-discipline-audit` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/xiaolai/pronoun-discipline-audit/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Security - Author: xiaolai (https://skillmd.com/u/xiaolai) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/xiaolai/pronoun-discipline-audit --- # Pronoun Discipline Audit ## Global Five Over-Rules 1. **Evidence before elegance.** Never improve the story by weakening the evidence. 2. **Responsibility follows control, benefit, knowledge, and preventability.** Do not stop at the most visible actor. 3. **Keep the taxonomy intact.** Distinguish pure scapegoat, partial scapegoat, system/object alibi, and cost-bearing goat. 4. **Steelman before judgment.** Every major claim must face its strongest counterargument before it is asserted. 5. **Handoff cleanly.** Every output must state assumptions, evidence grade, open questions, and next owner. ## When to use - Wayne self-runs during drafting as the Test 1–5 sweep (per rule 14) before flipping a chapter to `in-review`. - Laura runs during red-team as a specific axis of rule-12 V8 (no internal laundering) — pronoun-laundering and meta-frame distance are internal laundering at the linguistic layer. - jerry-crew-chief runs corpus-wide before `/compile-book` to catch any residual violations that survived the per-chapter sweep. The `scan-pronoun-discipline.py` hook is the cheap pattern-level pass that runs on every edit. This skill is the deeper read. ## Decision rubric A chapter passes pronoun-discipline-audit when every sentence satisfies: 1. **No meta-frame.** No "this chapter," "the book," "the reader," "readers," "this section," "this passage," "this paragraph," "the author" — outside cited quotes, frontmatter, intra-crew sections, and table-of-contents. 2. **No author-voice "you".** Outside cited quotes, "you" / "your" / "yours" / "yourself" / "for you" / "if you X" reframed to "we" / "us" / "ourselves" / "for us" / "if we X" or to imperative. 3. **No modal-prescriptive.** "You should / must / ought," "we should remember / never / always" reframed to imperative ("Ask in writing"). 4. **No evasive collective.** "People tend to," "many readers will," "anyone can see," "one might think" reframed to specific named group or to "we" or dropped. 5. **"We" passes the substitution test.** Every "we" in author voice, when substituted with "I and the reader together," produces an honest sentence. Otherwise the "we" launders a specific actor that should be named. 6. **Passive voice carries actor attribution.** Per rule 07: when the source names the actor, the chapter names the actor. Passive voice without attribution is refused (or hedged explicitly). A chapter fails when: - Any meta-frame violation outside the permitted exemptions. - Any author-voice "you" outside cited quotes. - Any modal-prescriptive form outside intentional protocol design. - Any evasive-collective form ("people tend to") in chapter prose. - "We" used to launder a specific actor or specific group's choice. - Passive voice hiding a named actor. ## Conflict handling 1. **"You" inside a verbatim cited quote.** *Preserved per rule 06.* The audit reports the pattern as "cited-quote, exempt" and moves on. 2. **"The book" in front-matter or table-of-contents.** *Permitted.* Meta-frame is acknowledged when the structure is the explicit subject. Refused inside chapter prose. 3. **"Earlier in this chapter" in a transitional pivot.** *Borderline.* Strict version: drop "in this chapter," keep "earlier" ("We saw earlier..." rather than "Earlier in this chapter, we saw..."). Acceptable in transitions but sparingly. 4. **"The reader" in a chapter that engages reader-as-artifact (ch-13 closing material).** *Borderline-permitted.* ch-13 has structural reader-as-artifact passages by design; flag for xiaolai confirmation rather than auto-fail. 5. **"We tend to" used as a chapter's diagnostic confession (the chapter performs the misreading and then breaks it).** *Permitted* if the chapter follows the confession with immediate disconfirmation. Otherwise refuse — drift toward laundering. 6. **Beat-10 prescriptive sentences originally in "you should" form.** *Refuse "should"; reframe to imperative.* The discipline is invariant even where the genre's beat-10 conventions historically used modal-prescriptive forms. ## Escalation conditions - Escalate to Wayne for prose-level reframes (most violations). - Escalate to Bonnie when a meta-frame violation reflects structural confusion (the chapter narrating its own architecture because the architecture isn't legible from the prose). - Escalate to Laura when the audit detects pronoun-laundering — a "we" that disguises a specific failure. This is a rule-12 V8 violation by extension. - Escalate to Nancy when "you" address drifts into implicating the reader in something that may carry defamation surface (rare). - Escalate to xaiolai for ch-13 structural reader-address questions; for the closing sentence (xiaolai-authored, has authorial latitude). ## Boundary-case recipes 1. **Auditing a chapter heavy with "this chapter installs" / "the chapter argues" forms.** First sweep: count occurrences. If >10 per chapter, structural issue — escalate to Bonnie. If <10, mechanical reframe per the meta-frame table in rule 14. 2. **Auditing beat 10 ("What this might mean for us").** Highest concentration of "you" violations historically. Expect 10–30 reframes per chapter pre-migration. Imperative form is the dominant fix. 3. **Auditing a chapter with the "Findings for xaiolai" intra-crew section at the end.** Skill auto-exempts the section. Verify the section boundary is correctly identified; the hook's INTRA_CREW_SECTION_RE handles "Findings for xaiolai" / "Annotations and handoff" / "Notes for crew" / "Crew notes" / "Handoff" headers. 4. **Auditing a chapter where source-named actor is being hidden in passive voice.** Audit cross-references rule 07. Wayne reframes per rule 07; this audit confirms the actor surfaces in active voice with subject in the right pronoun (named third-person typically). 5. **Auditing a chapter against an updated card titles list (Chicago rule-13 work).** Pronoun discipline operates on author voice; cited-quote material (rule 06) and `[CITE: slug]` markers (rule 13 Layer 2) are exempt. Audit focuses on the non-cited prose between the brackets. ## Output format ```text Owner: pronoun-discipline-audit (skill run by ) Task: Audit against rule 14. Inputs reviewed: - book/chapters-v2/-.md - .claude/rules/14-authorial-stance.md Output: pronoun-discipline-audit memo at process/audits/--pronoun-discipline-audit.md Evidence grade: N/A Assumptions: Open questions: Risks: Handoff: ``` Per-pattern findings table: | Line | Pattern | Snippet | Required reframe | |---|---|---|---| Summary row: `total findings / meta-frame / you / modal-prescriptive / evasive-collective / pronoun-laundering (judgment-level)`. ## Examples Context: ch-02 has 47 meta-frame violations after first pass. Wayne self-audits before flipping to in-review. A: "Pronoun-discipline-audit for ch-02: 47 violations. Meta-frame: 31 (24 'the chapter / this chapter', 5 'the book', 2 'the reader'). You: 12 (9 in beat-10; 3 in scattered protocol sentences). Modal-prescriptive: 3 ('you should' in beat-10; 'we must remember' in beat-9 closing). Evasive-collective: 1 ('many readers'). Pronoun-laundering: 0 (judgment-level pass clean). Recommended sweep: ~1 hour. Pattern: beat-10 carries 12 'you' instances and 3 modal-prescriptive forms — the highest concentration. Imperative reframe across beat-10 closes about half the total finding count." Real first-pass audit shape: meta-frame dominates, beat-10 carries the "you" concentration. Wayne's sweep is mechanical-bounded with judgment overhead on the V8-laundering check.