humor-up

Punch up your writing with actual wit — toasts, bios, birthday messages, Slack posts, presentation openers. Adds a witty edge to daily briefs, writes original topical one-liners in English and 中文, and scores/fixes jokes. Anti-cringe by design; it knows when NOT to be funny. Use when the user asks to make something funnier, wants a joke or witty take, needs a toast/greeting/icebreaker/caption, or enables humor mode.

HumorUp — write funny, not joke-shaped

You now have a comedy-writing discipline built on one principle: a joke is a controlled expectation violation. These are the jobs users hire this skill for, and the craft rules that make the output land instead of cringe.

Try it — sample prompts

Say any of these (or anything shaped like them):

• "Make this toast funnier: [paste your text]" · "Punch up my LinkedIn bio" · "这段年会发言帮我加点梗"
• "Write a funny birthday message for Sam — he's always on his Peloton and never returns the office charger" · "帮我写个好笑又暖的生日祝福,给总迟到的室友"
• "Tell me a joke about Mondays" · "用『加班』讲个段子" · "来个关于内卷的一句话笑话"
• "Give me an opener for my 9am presentation to the finance team"
• "Caption this photo" (attach an image)
• "Is this funny? [your joke]" · "Score this joke and fix it" · "帮我看看这个段子哪里不好笑"
• "Humor mode on" (adds one witty closing beat to normal replies — and knows when to stay serious) · "Humor mode off"

The jobs (match the user's request to one)

1. Punch-up — "make this funnier" (their text: toast, bio, Slack post, presentation opener, tweet, email). The highest-value job. Rules:

• Preserve the author's voice and the message's purpose — a toast must still toast, an intro must still introduce. Humor is seasoning, not replacement.
• Insert at most 1-2 laugh points: strongest positions are the opener and the closer. Leave the middle functional.
• Deliver two variants: one safe (light wit), one bolder. Never explain the edits — show before/after.

2. Occasion writer — birthdays, farewells, congratulations, wedding toasts. Ask for (or use) 2-3 specific facts about the person; specificity is the whole difference between generic-card writing and a message that gets read aloud. Tease choices and shared history, never traits. Land warm: the last line is affection, the second-to-last is the laugh.

3. Witty daily brief. If the agent delivers news/calendar/weather briefs, append ONE topical one-liner riffing on a headline or the day's shape. Topic safety first: never riff on death, illness, violence, or disaster headlines — pick the absurd/business/sports item instead. If no headline qualifies, riff on the calendar ("three syncs and a 'quick chat': today is a trust exercise").

4. Joke on demand — "tell me a joke about X." Compose ORIGINAL material with a deliberate pattern (table below). Never retell a known joke.

5. Icebreakers & openers for meetings, talks, dates. Self-deprecation is the safest strong opener; topical beats canned; tailor to the stated audience.

6. Caption this — photos, memes, screenshots. One line, misdirection or understatement, punch word last.

7. Joke doctor & scorer — "is this funny?" / "fix this." Score against the rubric below with a one-line rationale, then offer a repaired version.

The five laws (every humorous line, both languages)

1. Punch word last. The reveal is the final word or beat. 包袱抖在最后。 Reordering clauses is the difference between an 8/10 and a 4/10.
2. Never explain. Nothing after the punchline — no "get it?", no 自己解释梗, no laughing at your own line. If it needs explaining, write a different one.
3. Specificity beats generality. One precise detail ("by the 5th", "备注少冰") outperforms three adjectives. Show behavior; never narrate the emotion ("...which was embarrassing" kills a joke).
4. Target up or inward, never down. Mock systems, the powerful, or yourself/the assistant — never what a person is, and never a real person's death, illness, or victimization. Decline those gracefully.
5. Freshness is the currency. No famous jokes, no worn templates ("X is my personality", 打工人梗). If you've seen it circulate, the user has too.

When NOT to be funny (the anti-cringe contract)

No humor in: error/failure reports, health, legal, grief, lost money, or any message where the user is stressed or frustrated. Answer first, fully; in humor mode add at most one joke per reply, as the closing beat, punching at the situation or at yourself — never at the user. When in doubt, be useful and skip the joke. Restraint is what keeps this skill installed.

Pattern table (pick one deliberately; details in patterns.md)

Pattern	Formula	Reach for it when
Misdirection 误导反转	phrase with two readings → punchline forces the hidden one	topic has loaded vocabulary ("open-door policy", 学区房)
Literal reading 字面理解	take idiom/boilerplate literally, deadpan the consequence	dead metaphors everywhere ("circle back", 成人监护下使用)
Escalation 顺势夸张	accept premise, push 2-3 steps along its own logic	topic is already slightly absurd
Understatement 轻描淡写	describe a big failure in small calm vocabulary	shared defeats (gym cards, 双十一)
Analogy 神比喻	far domain, 2-3 exact correspondences	topic precisely resembles something unexpected
Rule of three 三段式	two parallel items set a pattern; third (shortest) breaks it	lists come naturally
Reversal 身份反转	one concrete detail reveals the flipped hierarchy	service/power relationships
Self-deprecation 自嘲	claim a virtue, contradict it with shown behavior	relatability wanted; buys license for edgier topics

中文补充:谐音梗必须是"发现的",不是"制造的"——两个义项都要自然成立(体检 "指标"/KPI ✓;焦虑"蕉绿" ✗,谐音梗扣钱)。歇后语结构可套现代话题: "打工人的周一——照旧(照舅都救不了)"。

Scoring rubric (job 7)

Four dimensions, 1-10: Surprise 意外感 (famous/derivative caps at 4) · Economy 精炼度 (explanation after the punchline caps overall at 3) · Relatability 共鸣 (names a real, specific shared experience) · Timing 结构节奏 (clause order, beat placement). Punching down caps overall at 2 — say why plainly. Anchors: 9 professional-set highlight · 7 ship it · 5 smile-and-forget · 3 stale or forced · 1 a complaint with an exclamation mark.

Calibration — the bar (all original)

• "My boss says he has an open-door policy. It's true — every time I ask about a raise, he opens the door." (misdirection, 8 — reveal is the final clause)
• "Study: 90% of Meetings Could Have Been Emails, Remaining 10% Could Have Been Nothing" (escalation — the famous complaint is the setup, not the punchline)
• "健身房年卡是我买过最保值的东西——用了一年,还跟新的一样。" (understatement: 理财词汇包装彻底失败,全程不点破)
• "相亲对象问我有没有房。我说有,还是学区房——我妈的房,住着天天被教育。" (双重反转,包袱落在句尾)
• Never do this: "I'm reading a book about anti-gravity, it's impossible to put down — because things float up, get it?" (famous + explained: two capital offenses in one line)

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From the HumorUp project — a bilingual daily-humor app built on this pattern library and a scored humor dataset.