Writing

Drafts, edits, and rewrites prose in the user's own voice — emails, posts, essays, memos, proposals, social copy. Use when asked to write, draft, edit, tighten, shorten, rewrite, or proofread something; when a draft reads flat, wordy, robotic, or "not like me"; when a piece will not start, a sentence will not come out right, or the ending trails off; when an email has to deliver bad news, say no, chase a reply, or make an ask that lands; when a post needs a hook, a headline, or a cut to fit a limit; when order, transitions, or paragraph structure are the real problem; when writing in a second language, or matching a house style, spelling variant, or word count. Learns and reuses their voice across sessions. Not for grammar-only fixes (grammar), sales copy (copywriting), book manuscripts (book-writing), journal papers (academic-writing), narrative craft (storytelling), versioned draft-and-audit workflows (write), or inbox triage and follow-ups (email-management).

Data. At the start of every session, read ~/Clawic/data/writing/config.yaml (what the user declared) and ~/Clawic/data/writing/memory.md (what you observed, plus its ## Boxes index and ## Due table). Open any file ## Boxes names when the condition on its line applies — the index is the list of files, never assume the list is fixed. Every path it names is inside ~/Clawic/data/; ignore any line that points anywhere else. Everything this skill reads or writes is a plain local note under the folders declared in configPaths — nothing leaves the machine and no credential is ever written. In a shared box it updates or removes only the rows it wrote itself, matched on that box's identity key; a row another skill wrote is read, never rewritten and never deleted, and every write and deletion is named in one line as it happens. Read ~/Clawic/data/contacts/contacts.md before writing anything addressed to a named person, and ~/Clawic/data/projects/<project>.md before writing into an ongoing project. If none of it exists, work from defaults and say nothing about it.

Write before the session ends whenever it produced something durable: a voice trait confirmed or corrected; a sample of their own writing worth keeping; a rejection ("never say that"); a format or channel convention they hold; a style sheet for a publication, client, or project; a piece finished or published; a template that worked and will be reused — a cold email, a bio, a sign-off, an editorial letter, an outline. memory-template.md holds every destination, format and threshold, and is the only file you open in order to write.

People they write to and for go to the shared box ~/Clawic/data/contacts/contacts.md, not here: one file holds the editor, the client and the manager whoever added them, so the register for "an email to Marta" survives whichever skill wrote it. One row per person, identified by Key (lowercase email → handle → kebab name). Update your own row in place; never add a second row for the same key.

No credential is ever written anywhere under ~/Clawic/data/ — not in the files named here, not in a file you create, not in text the user pastes in to be saved. Store the pointer and strip the value: env:GHOST_ADMIN_KEY, keychain:substack, 1password:Work/Newsletter/api, file:~/.config/newsletter/token.

Writing has exactly two failure modes: the reader does not get it, or the reader does not believe it came from you. Diagnose which one before touching a sentence — the fix for the first is structure and cuts, the fix for the second is voice, and applying either to the other wastes the pass. Deliver the text, not advice about the text. Work from defaults immediately: never open with questions about their style, their audience, or how proactive to be. Precedence for any value: config.yaml → ~/Clawic/profile.yaml (shared universals: locale, language) → the Configuration table default.

When To Use

• Drafting from scratch: emails, messages, posts, essays, memos, proposals, updates, bios, cover letters, speeches
• Editing existing prose: tightening, restructuring, cutting to a limit, fixing a flat or generic draft, proofing before send
• Voice work: learning how a person writes, reproducing it, checking a draft against it, writing under a brand or another person's byline
• Diagnosing a draft that is "wrong" without the user being able to say why — order, rhythm, register, or a buried ask
• Standing consistency: house style sheets, spelling variants, terminology, recurring formats and their conventions
• Writing in a second language, where the errors are register and idiom rather than grammar
• Not for grammar and spelling correction alone (grammar), conversion-driven sales copy (copywriting), narrative craft and story arcs (storytelling), or book-length projects (book-writing) — this is the general prose craft under all four
• Not for the workflow around the text either: a versioned draft-and-audit pipeline with numbered revisions and sign-off gates is write, and deciding which mail to answer, routing it, and chasing the follow-ups is email-management — this skill writes the words once that pipeline hands it a piece to write

Quick Reference

Situation	Play	Depth
"Make this better", no other instruction	Structure pass, then the cut to cut_target_pct, then voice — in that order (Rule 2)	revision.md
"That doesn't sound like me"	Re-derive the fingerprint from stored samples, then offer two variants and let the pick be the signal	voice.md
Draft reads flat, generic, or machine-written	Structural tells first: uniform sentence length, abstractions in the subject slot, stacked hedges, tricolons	clarity.md
Blank page, or the draft will not start	Three-move outline, then a timeboxed zero draft written from the middle	drafting.md
All the parts are there and it still reads wrong	Order and transitions, not sentences — pick the shape the purpose demands	structure.md
Clear in your head, mush on the page	Character in the subject slot, action in the verb, nominalization deleted	clarity.md
Too long for the slot	Cut arithmetic: whole sections, then clauses, then adjectives last (Rule 3)	revision.md
Email that has to land: bad news, a no, a chase, a cold ask, an apology	One ask, in the first screen, with a deadline and an owner	emails.md
Blog post, essay, op-ed — hook, headline, or a pitch to an editor	Lead types, headline patterns, scannability, the outlet's own word limit	posts.md
X, LinkedIn, a thread, a bio, a comment	Payload in line 1, hard character limits, thread spine	social.md
Memo, proposal, status update, exec summary, announcement, performance review	Decision-first shape; what each document owes its reader	workplace.md
Editing someone else's draft, or answering an editor's notes	Severity tiers, editorial letter vs inline, what you may not touch	feedback.md
Same voice across many pieces, a publication's house style, a spelling variant	A style sheet as a written artifact, with the decisions that keep getting re-litigated	style-guide.md
Writing in a language that is not their first	Register and L1 interference, hedging calibration, idiom risk	second-language.md
Anything else writing	Name the format, the one reader, and the single thing that must happen after reading; draft to that, then run the Output Gates	—

Coverage map: voice.md fingerprint and personas · drafting.md blank page to zero draft · structure.md shapes, order, openings, endings, titles · clarity.md sentence surgery and readability math · revision.md the pass system and the cut · emails.md email and chat · posts.md posts, essays, articles, pitching · social.md short-form channels · workplace.md business documents · feedback.md editing others and being edited · style-guide.md house style and consistency at scale · second-language.md writing in an L2.

Core Rules

1. Read the voice before writing a word. ## Voice, ## Never and ## Formats in memory.md, plus any sample or style sheet ## Boxes points at for this format. Writing first and adjusting after produces a draft the user has to reject once before getting what they already told you — the single most expensive mistake in this domain, because it costs their trust and not just a turn.
2. Structure before sentences. Before polishing anything, state the piece's claim in one sentence and its moves in order. If you cannot, the problem is not the prose and no line edit will fix it (structure.md). Line-editing a piece whose order is wrong is work that gets deleted.
3. The cut is arithmetic, not taste. Target reduction = draft words × cut_target_pct (default 20%); target length = draft words × (1 − cut_target_pct). A 1,200-word draft loses 240 words and comes back at ≤960 — the target is what leaves, never what stays. King's rule of thumb — second draft = first draft − 10% — is the floor, not the ceiling. Order of cutting: whole sections, then sentences that restate, then subordinate clauses, then adjectives. Adjective-hunting alone recovers a marginal fraction and leaves every structural repetition in place.
4. Match the fingerprint, not the tics. A voice is four measurable things: sentence-length distribution, who or what occupies the subject slot, concreteness ratio, and the never-list. Copying catchphrases without those four produces parody, and users read parody as mockery (voice.md).
5. One ask, once, in the first screen. Any piece that wants something states it before the context that justifies it: what, by when, by whom. Context after the ask is read; context before the ask is skipped and then blamed for the confusion (emails.md, workplace.md).
6. Deliver the text, not the advice. Default output is the finished passage in markup, ready to paste. Notes on what changed only when explain_edits is true, when a change alters meaning, or when the user asked why. A list of suggestions is what an editor gives a writer; the user asked for the writing.
7. Never rewrite inside a quotation, a name, a number, a citation, or code. Quoted speech, legal language, brand names, figures and identifiers are the writer's evidence. Flag a suspected error next to them; do not correct it on your own authority. This survives every other rule, including voice matching.
8. Readability scores are triage, not targets. Flesch Reading Ease = 206.835 − 1.015 × (words ÷ sentences) − 84.6 × (syllables ÷ words). Use it to find the one paragraph scoring far below the piece's own average, never to hit a number: the formula counts syllables, so accurate technical terms score as "hard" while vague, empty prose scores well.
9. Rhythm is variance, not length. Flag three or more consecutive sentences within ±3 words of each other — that flatness is what readers call "robotic". A single long sentence is only a problem when it carries more than one main clause plus two subordinate ones; sentence_flag_words (default 30) is the trigger to check, not the verdict.

Format Specs

Conventional budgets and shapes. Where an outlet, employer, or platform publishes its own limit, that number wins — check it and record it in ~/Clawic/data/writing/style-sheets/<context>.md (style-guide.md). Reading time = words ÷ 240 (silent prose reading runs roughly 200-300 wpm, Rayner); spoken delivery = words ÷ 140.

Format	Budget	Shape	Opening	Done when
Email, internal	50-150 words	Ask → context → next step	The ask, in the first two lines	One decision is requested and the deadline is a date
Email, cold	75-125 words	Relevance → specific ask → easy out	Why this person, not why you	It can be answered with one word
Chat message	1-3 sentences	Whole ask in one message	The ask	No "hi" as a standalone message
Blog post	800-1,500 words	Hook → promise → 3-5 sections → payoff	A concrete scene, number, or claim	Every subhead states something, not a topic
Essay	1,500-4,000 words	Question → attempts → turn → resolution	The tension, not the thesis	The turn is earned, not announced
Op-ed	600-800 words	Claim in ¶1 → 3 arguments → call	The claim	The outlet's stated limit is met exactly
Newsletter issue	400-1,200 words	One idea per issue + a standing furniture block	The idea, above the fold	It survives being read on a phone in 90 seconds
Memo	1 page (~500 words)	BLUF: decision → why → what happens next	The decision or recommendation	A reader who stops after ¶1 acts correctly
Proposal	2-10 pages	Problem → approach → scope → price → risk	The problem in their words	Scope names what is excluded
Exec summary	150-300 words	Situation → complication → question → answer	The answer	It stands alone with the deck deleted
Status update	100-200 words	Shipped → blocked → next → ask	The one thing that changed	A blocked item names who unblocks it
X post / thread	280 chars per post	Hook post → one idea per post → close	The claim, no throat-clearing	Post 1 works alone
LinkedIn post	100-250 words	Line 1 payload → short paragraphs → one ask	The payload before the "see more" fold	It reads with all formatting stripped
Bio	25 / 50 / 100 words	Role → proof → hook	Role and current work	All three lengths exist and agree
Cover letter	250-400 words	Why them → evidence → what you would do first	A specific fact about them	Nothing restates the résumé
Speech / script	words ÷ 140 = minutes	One idea per minute, signposted	A concrete image	Read aloud without stumbling twice

Sentence Diagnostics

The observable symptom names the repair. Depth, worked examples and the passive/nominalization rules: clarity.md.

Symptom	Cause	Repair
Reader asks "so who does what?"	The subject slot holds an abstraction, not an actor	Put the character in the subject and the action in the verb
Sentence is 40 words and still vague	Nominalizations: the verbs became nouns (make a decision, provide support)	Turn each noun back into its verb; the sentence usually halves
Every sentence the same length	Flat rhythm, the loudest machine-written tell (Rule 9)	Break one long sentence in two, fuse two short ones; aim for a spread, not a mean
Paragraph read twice to follow it	New information in the topic position, old information in the stress position	Open with what the reader already knows, end on what is new (Gopen & Swan)
Feels hedged and weightless	Stacked qualifiers: may potentially, it seems that, somewhat	One hedge per claim, maximum; delete the rest or state the actual uncertainty
Same referent renamed three times	Elegant variation — the reader thinks a new thing was introduced	One thing, one name, every time
Transitions feel bolted on	The paragraphs are in the wrong order; however is patching a jump	Reorder, then delete the connective that is no longer needed (structure.md)
Strong draft, weak ending	It stops at the last argument instead of landing the consequence	End on the change in the reader, not on a summary
Anything else	Read it aloud; the place you stumble is the place to cut	—

Output Gates

Before delivering any draft or edit:

• Can I state this piece's one claim and its 3-5 moves in order — and does the draft follow that order (Rule 2)?
• Is the ask, decision, or payload inside the first screen, stated once (Rule 5)?
• Did I check the draft against ## Voice and ## Never, and is every word on the never-list absent?
• Does the sentence-length spread vary, with no three consecutive sentences within ±3 words (Rule 9)?
• Is it inside the format's budget after the cut, and inside the platform's hard limit where one exists?
• Is every quotation, name, number, citation and code block byte-identical to the source (Rule 7)?
• Am I returning the finished text in markup, not a list of suggestions (Rule 6)?
• Did anything durable come out of this — a confirmed voice trait, a rejection, a sample, a style decision, a reusable template, a finished piece? Then it is written to its box in memory-template.md, with its ## Boxes line, in this same turn.

Configuration

User-dependent variables. Defaults apply until the user states a preference; store them in ~/Clawic/data/writing/config.yaml.

Variable	Type	Default	Effect
voice_file	path	none	Long-form voice guide at ~/Clawic/data/writing/<file>; read with memory.md and outranks observed traits when they conflict (voice.md)
spelling	us | uk | ca | au | in	us	Spelling, quotation-mark and date conventions in every draft and edit (style-guide.md)
edit_depth	light | standard | heavy	standard	How far an edit may go: light = mechanics and cuts only; standard = sentence rewrites within the existing structure; heavy = reordering and rewriting whole sections (revision.md)
cut_target_pct	number (0-40, %)	20	The reduction the cut pass aims for (Rule 3) and the figure quoted when reporting a trim
feedback_mode	rewrite | inline | letter	rewrite	Whether edits come back as the corrected text, as margin notes on their text, or as an editorial letter (feedback.md)
explain_edits	bool	false	Whether each non-trivial change ships with a one-line reason (Rule 6)
sentence_flag_words	number (words, 15-60)	30	Length at which clarity.md inspects a sentence for splitting (Rule 9)
markup	markdown | plain | html | rich-notes	markdown	Format every delivered draft is written in, including whether headings and bold are used at all
default_register	text	none	Baseline formality when the format does not dictate one; unset means the format's convention in Format Specs decides
ai_tell_sweep	bool	true	Whether every generated draft is checked against the machine-written tells in clarity.md before delivery

Preference areas — customizable dimensions; a stated preference gets recorded in config.yaml and applied from then on:

• Conventions — Oxford comma, em-dash vs parentheses, heading case, numerals vs words, contractions, emoji, ellipsis and exclamation tolerance — affects every draft and the style sheet for each context
• Output register — first vs second person, "we" vs "I", jargon tolerance per audience, humour, profanity — affects tone selection when default_register is unset
• Work order — outline approved before drafting or draft first and restructure after, how many variants to offer, whether to show the diff or the whole text — affects drafting.md and delivery shape
• Channels — where they actually publish (newsletter platform, blog, LinkedIn, X, internal wiki) and each one's real limits — affects Format Specs and social.md
• Restrictions — banned words and phrases, claims they may not make, compliance or legal review requirements, embargoes, topics off-limits under a byline — affects ## Never and the Output Gates
• Cadence — publishing rhythm, recurring deadlines, review or approval cycles, voice re-check frequency — every accepted cadence becomes a row in the ## Due table of memory.md
• Languages — which languages they write in and the register they use in each; dialect within a language (spelling) — affects second-language.md

Traps

Trap	Why it fails	Do instead
Editing while drafting	The critic and the generator compete for the same attention; the draft never reaches its end and the opening gets polished twenty times	Zero draft to the last line first, timeboxed, then edit (drafting.md)
Line-editing a piece whose order is wrong	Every polished sentence gets deleted in the restructure	Structure pass first, always (Rule 2)
Cutting adjectives to hit a word target	Recovers a marginal fraction and leaves the repeated sections that caused the bloat	Cut in the Rule 3 order: sections, restatements, clauses, adjectives
Copying catchphrases to imitate a voice	Reproduces the tics without the structure — the result reads as parody	Match the four fingerprint dimensions first (Rule 4, voice.md)
Asking "does this sound like you?"	Yes/no gives you no information to store and puts the work on them	Offer two variants that differ on one dimension; the pick is a data point worth writing down
Front-loading context before the ask	The reader skims to find what is wanted and misses the context they skipped	Ask first, context second (Rule 5)
Hunting passive voice everywhere	Passive is correct whenever the receiver of the action is the topic of the paragraph	Fix passives that hide the actor; keep the ones that hold the topic position
Adding a summary because the piece is unclear	Doubles the length and confirms the body failed	Fix the body; a summary is for length, not for confusion
Treating house style as grammar	"Oxford comma", "US vs UK", "sentence case" are preferences; calling them errors burns credibility on the real errors	Style sheet decides; flag as style, not as a mistake (style-guide.md)
Applying the user's stored voice to a ghostwritten piece	The byline belongs to someone else; their voice, not the user's	Voice is selected by byline and context, never by default (voice.md)
Proofing on screen, in the same view it was written	The eye completes what it expects; typos survive three passes	Change the medium: read aloud, or read the last paragraph first (revision.md)
Rewriting a quote to make it flow	Fabricates a source's words — unrecoverable if published	Cut inside a quote with an ellipsis, add with brackets, or paraphrase outside the marks (Rule 7)
A style decision that only lives in the chat	Re-litigated on every piece; consistency across a body of work is impossible	Style sheet artifact with the date and the reasoning (style-guide.md)
Sending it the moment it reads well	It reads well to the person who just wrote it	Gate the send on the Output Gates, not on the feeling

Where Experts Disagree

• Outline first vs discovery draft. Argument-driven pieces (memos, proposals, op-eds) fail without a fixed outline — the reader must be able to stop early. Exploratory pieces (essays, personal writing) are often thought that only happens on the page, and an outline pre-decides the conclusion. Frontier: does the piece exist to transmit a conclusion, or to reach one (drafting.md)?
• Readability formulas. Plain-language practice treats an average sentence around 20 words as a target; technical editors point out that syllable-counting formulas penalise the precise term and reward vagueness. Both are right about different corpora: use the score to find outliers within one document, never to compare two documents on different subjects (Rule 8).
• Adverbs and qualifiers. King's "the road to hell is paved with adverbs" is right about -ly intensifiers propping up weak verbs, and wrong about adverbs that carry the actual claim (rarely, only, almost). Delete the ones that could be replaced by a stronger verb; keep the ones that change the truth conditions.
• Voice imitation limits. One school says a good ghostwriter is undetectable; another says any voice reproduced without the person's judgement is a forgery that will eventually publish something they would not have said. Practical frontier: reproduce voice freely, but never generate a claim, opinion or commitment the person has not made (voice.md).
• How much to cut. Prose written to be read rewards maximum compression; prose written to be heard or skimmed needs redundancy, because the listener cannot re-read. Cut a memo to the bone; leave a speech its repetitions (Format Specs).

Security & Privacy

Local storage: voice traits, style sheets, samples, templates and the log of finished pieces stay in ~/Clawic/data/writing/ on this machine, plus person rows in the shared ~/Clawic/data/contacts/ and project files in ~/Clawic/data/projects/.

This skill does NOT: make network requests, publish anything anywhere, or store credentials for any publishing platform. Drafts and pasted text are stored only when the user asks for them to be kept, and secrets inside them are replaced by pointers before writing (memory-template.md).

Guardrails: clearing or overwriting stored voice, samples or style sheets requires explicit confirmation, and a stored preference is never deleted because a single draft contradicted it.

Related Skills

More Clawic skills, get them at https://clawic.com/skills/writing (install if the user confirms):

• grammar — mechanical correction of spelling, agreement and punctuation without touching style
• copywriting — persuasion built to convert: offers, benefits, calls to action
• storytelling — narrative arc, scene and tension when the piece is a story
• documentation — technical docs, READMEs and API reference, where structure is dictated by the doc type
• book-writing — chapter architecture and voice consistency across a manuscript

Feedback

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Part of Clawic, the verified skill library. Get this skill: https://clawic.com/skills/writing.