feat(voice): add recipient-priority ordering, calibrate the paragraph rule

Adds pattern #47: in a reply, lead with what matters most to the recipient, not the easiest answer or the order they wrote it. Correspondence-scoped, so it fires on email, Signal, and letters and nowhere else. It's the one pattern that doesn't carry into personal mode, since a commit or PR review isn't a reply to someone's news.

Recalibrates #43 in the same edit. "Shifts angle" now means shifts topic: break between topics, consolidate within one, up to a five-or-six-sentence ceiling. The never-merge line was being read at sentence granularity, which fragmented single topics across paragraphs. #43 and #47 are one rule seen from both sides, the break between topics and the order of them, not a rule in tension with its neighbor.

Both land in SKILL.md and the profile per the pairing rule, with the worked before/after in the profile. From a home session drafting a Signal reply; the design is Craig's.

2 files changed, 187 insertions, 0 deletions

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+#+TITLE: Proposal — two correspondence patterns for the voice skill (prose mode)
+
+* What this is
+
+Craig taught two structural rules while I drafted a Signal reply for him on
+2026-07-23. They aren't in the voice skill yet. He asked whether they belong in
+=/voice personal=; I said no, because personal mode is publish artifacts only
+(commits, PR titles and bodies, PR review comments) and email and Signal are
+prose mode. Sending the proposal here since rulesets owns =voice/=.
+
+I did *not* edit =~/code/rulesets/voice/SKILL.md= from the home session. The
+=~/.claude/skills/voice= symlink points straight at the canonical, so a local
+"stopgap" edit would have been an unflagged write into rulesets' scope. Home
+carries a memory as its stopgap instead.
+
+* The two rules, as Craig stated them
+
+1. *Order by what matters most to the recipient*, not by what's easiest to
+   answer or the order they wrote it. Their news outranks your logistics. A
+   direct question they asked can sort *below* personal news they shared.
+2. *Group each topic into one paragraph.* Everything on a subject goes
+   together rather than fragmenting across several paragraphs.
+
+* The worked case
+
+His sister sent a long catch-up: 30+ lbs lost, a deep from-scratch cooking run
+(sourdough, English muffins, tortillas, home-roasted deli meat), a mixer she's
+considering, and one direct question about whether he subscribes to MasterClass.
+
+My first draft opened with the MasterClass answer, because it was the only
+explicit question, and split the cooking material across three paragraphs.
+
+Craig reordered it: weight first, then one paragraph carrying the entire cooking
+thread, then MasterClass, then the personal close. His framing was "start with
+what would be the most important things to her."
+
+The lesson is that leading with the easy answer reads as transactional, and a
+topic split across paragraphs reads as a checklist rather than a person talking.
+
+* The conflict that needs resolving in the same edit
+
+Pattern #43 currently reads, in part:
+
+#+begin_quote
+Never merge short paragraphs into multi-sentence ones in a "clean prose" pass
+(corpus: 41-74% of Craig's paragraphs are exactly one sentence, depending on
+register).
+#+end_quote
+
+Rule 2 above is a merge instruction. Taken naively the two patterns contradict,
+and a future run gets whipsawed.
+
+They aren't actually in conflict, but the boundary has to be stated or the
+skill can't act on both:
+
+- *#43 governs an angle shift.* A one-sentence paragraph stands when the next
+  thought moves to a different subject. Craig's openers and closers stay
+  one-sentence, and they did in the final draft.
+- *The new rule governs one topic that got fragmented.* Three paragraphs all
+  about cooking become one.
+
+Proposed formulation: same topic → one paragraph. New angle → new paragraph.
+Whichever way this is written, #43's "never merge" line needs a qualifier
+pointing at the new pattern, or it will keep reading as absolute.
+
+* Scope
+
+These govern *correspondence* (email, Signal, letters), which is narrower than
+prose mode's current surface. Prose mode also covers journals, working notes,
+and documents with no recipient, where "order by what matters to the recipient"
+has no referent. Worth deciding whether that's a tag on the two patterns, a
+sub-mode, or just a sentence in each rule.
+
+* What I'd suggest, but rulesets owns the call
+
+Two new prose-mode patterns, correspondence-scoped, plus a one-line qualifier on
+#43 naming the boundary. Numbering and the profile entries are yours. The
+=voice-profile.org= side wants the worked before/after above, since the
+reordering is the whole lesson and it doesn't survive as a rule line alone.
+
+* Provenance
+
+home session 2026-07-23, drafting a Signal reply to Craig's sister. Home holds a
+=correspondence-structure-rules= memory as its interim, marked as pending this
+proposal.
diff --git a/inbox/PROCESSED-2026-07-23-2132-from-home-rulesets-voice-correspondence-followup.org b/inbox/PROCESSED-2026-07-23-2132-from-home-rulesets-voice-correspondence-followup.org
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+#+TITLE: Follow-up — better design for the correspondence patterns (supersedes the earlier proposal)
+
+* What this supersedes
+
+The 2026-07-23 21:27 handoff from home, =rulesets-voice-correspondence-patterns.org=.
+That one proposed *two* new prose-mode patterns and flagged a conflict with #43
+to be resolved. It asked the right question and proposed a worse answer. Craig
+and I worked it further the same evening. Take this design instead.
+
+* The reconciliation: there was no conflict
+
+I claimed rule 2 ("group each topic into one paragraph") contradicted #43
+("never merge short paragraphs"). It doesn't.
+
+#43 already carries the answer in the phrase *"when the next thought shifts
+angle."* The failure was reading "angle" at sentence granularity. Moving from
+her baking to the mixer to tortillas felt like three angles when I drafted it.
+It isn't. That's one topic with three facets. Moving from cooking to MasterClass
+is a real shift.
+
+So the fix is calibration, not a new competing rule: *angle means topic, not
+sentence.*
+
+Read that way the two rules are one rule seen from both sides. #43 protects the
+break *between* topics, which is where Craig's cadence actually lives. The
+grouping behavior fills in what happens *within* a topic, which #43 never
+specified and I filled in wrong.
+
+* The evidence is in the final draft
+
+Every one-sentence paragraph survived Craig's edit: the weight-loss opener, the
+MasterClass answer, the "I miss you and I love you" line, the closing ask for
+call times. Each is its own topic.
+
+The only merge was three paragraphs that were all cooking.
+
+So his edit didn't violate #43. It corrected my misreading of it. That's the
+strongest argument for folding this into #43 rather than adding a rule beside
+it: a pattern that has to be reconciled against its neighbor is a pattern that
+gets misapplied, and this one already was.
+
+* Proposed change (smaller than the first proposal)
+
+*One new pattern — recipient-priority ordering.* Correspondence-scoped, prose
+mode. Nothing in the skill covers it today.
+
+#+begin_quote
+In a reply, lead with what matters most to the recipient, not with what's
+easiest to answer or the order they wrote it. Their news outranks your
+logistics. A direct question they asked can sort below personal news they
+shared, because the news is what they care about.
+#+end_quote
+
+Scope note: this needs a recipient, so it applies to email, Signal, and letters.
+It has no referent in a journal, a working note, or a document addressed to
+nobody, all of which prose mode also covers. Worth a tag or a scope sentence.
+
+*One clarification to #43 — not a new pattern.* Three edits to the existing rule:
+
+1. State that "shifts angle" means shifts *topic*.
+2. Add that a single topic consolidates into one paragraph even when each
+   sentence in it is a complete thought.
+3. Keep the never-merge line, re-framed as a protection *across topic
+   boundaries*, which is what it was always defending.
+
+* The guard (Craig's number)
+
+Within-topic consolidation must not produce a wall. Craig set the ceiling at
+*about 5 to 6 sentences*, after which find a natural break and split there.
+
+Honest note on the worked example below: the cooking paragraph as sent runs
+seven sentences, slightly over its own guard. Craig called it an exception
+rather than re-cutting a message that had already gone out. The guard is the
+rule, that paragraph is a hair over it, and both facts belong in the record.
+
+* Worked before/after (for voice-profile.org)
+
+Her message: 30+ lbs lost, a deep from-scratch cooking run (sourdough, English
+muffins, tortillas, home-roasted deli meat), a mixer she's considering, and one
+direct question about whether Craig subscribes to MasterClass.
+
+*My first draft* opened with the MasterClass answer, because it was the only
+explicit question, and split the cooking material across three paragraphs.
+
+*Craig's order:* weight, then one paragraph carrying the entire cooking thread,
+then MasterClass, then the personal close. His framing: "start with what would
+be the most important things to her."
+
+The lesson: leading with the easy answer reads as transactional, and one topic
+split across paragraphs reads as a checklist rather than a person talking.
+
+* Mode confirmation
+
+Prose, confirmed with Craig. Personal mode stays publish artifacts only
+(commits, PR titles and bodies, PR review comments). Email and Signal are prose.
+
+* Provenance
+
+home session 2026-07-23, drafting and sending a Signal reply to Craig's sister.
+Home holds a =correspondence-structure-rules= memory as its interim; it will
+want updating to match this design once rulesets lands it, since it currently
+describes the earlier two-pattern framing.