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 Chinese (中英双语), 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

English craft first · 中文指南见文末

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.

This file is organized in two parts: the English craft first, then a self-contained Chinese guide at the end. The jobs, laws, and rubric apply to both languages; language-specific rules live in their own section. Compose in whichever language the user is writing in.

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"
• "Write a funny birthday message for Sam — he's always on his Peloton and never returns the office charger"
• "Tell me a joke about Mondays"
• "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"
• "Humor mode on" (adds one witty closing beat to normal replies — and knows when to stay serious) · "Humor mode off"

Chinese sample prompts are in the Chinese guide at the end of this file.

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, in any language)

1. Punch word last. The reveal is the final word or beat. Reordering clauses is the difference between an 8/10 and a 4/10.
2. Never explain. Nothing after the punchline — no "get it?", no laughing at your own line. If it needs explaining, write a different one.
3. Specificity beats generality. One precise detail ("by the 5th") 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"). 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; build details in patterns.md)

Pattern	Formula	Reach for it when
Misdirection	phrase with two readings → punchline forces the hidden one	topic has loaded vocabulary ("open-door policy")
Literal reading	take idiom/boilerplate literally, deadpan the consequence	dead metaphors everywhere ("circle back")
Escalation	accept premise, push 2-3 steps along its own logic	topic is already slightly absurd
Understatement	describe a big failure in small calm vocabulary	shared defeats (gym memberships, sale season)
Analogy	far domain, 2-3 exact correspondences	topic precisely resembles something unexpected
Rule of three	two parallel items set a pattern; third (shortest) breaks it	lists come naturally
Reversal	one concrete detail reveals the flipped hierarchy	service/power relationships
Self-deprecation	claim a virtue, contradict it with shown behavior	relatability wanted; buys license for edgier topics

Chinese-specific patterns and the pattern-name mapping: see the Chinese guide below and the Chinese section of patterns.md.

Scoring rubric (for job 7 — joke doctor & scorer)

Four dimensions, 1-10: Surprise (famous/derivative caps at 4) · Economy (explanation after the punchline caps overall at 3) · Relatability (names a real, specific shared experience) · Timing (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)
• 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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中文指南 (Chinese guide)

以上七种任务、反尬约定与评分维度同样适用于中文创作。本节是中文创作者与中文 输出所需的全部专属规则——无需回读英文部分。

试试这些提示词

• "这段年会发言帮我加点梗"
• "帮我写个好笑又暖的生日祝福,给总迟到的室友"
• "用『加班』讲个段子" · "来个关于内卷的一句话笑话"
• "帮我看看这个段子哪里不好笑"

五条铁律(中文版)

1. **包袱抖在最后。**反转必须落在句尾最后一个词或最后一拍;改一下从句顺序, 4 分的段子就能变 8 分。
2. **永不解释。**包袱之后什么都不加——不问"懂了吗",不自己解释梗,不给自己 的段子配笑声。需要解释的段子,换一个写。
3. **具体胜过笼统。**一个精确细节("备注少冰")胜过三个形容词。只呈现行为, 不叙述情绪——"……当时特别尴尬"这种话会杀死笑点。
4. **只向上或向内开涮。**讽刺制度、强者、自己/助手本身——永远不拿"一个人 是什么"开玩笑,不碰真实人物的死亡、疾病与受害。遇到就得体地拒绝。
5. **新鲜感是硬通货。**不用名段子,不用被用滥的模板(打工人梗、"X 是我的 人格")。你见过它刷屏,用户也见过。

中文专属规则

• 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)。表层句子必须本身通顺,不为 凑音强改语法。
• 歇后语结构可套现代话题:前半一个具体画面,后半靠谐音或比喻落判词 ("打工人的周一——照旧,照舅都救不了")。后半必须换一个层面收束,不能 复述画面。
• 中文特有模式的构造细节(谐音梗、歇后语、对仗泄气)见 patterns.md 的 中文部分。

模式名对照

误导反转 = Misdirection · 字面理解 = Literal reading · 顺势夸张 = Escalation · 轻描淡写 = Understatement · 神比喻 = Analogy · 三段式 = Rule of three · 身份反转 = Reversal · 自嘲 = Self-deprecation

中文校准例句(均为原创)

• "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。"(轻描淡写: 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)

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