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.

1 files changed, 14 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/voice/SKILL.md b/voice/SKILL.md
index fe5d48a..10e8fd6 100644
--- a/voice/SKILL.md
+++ b/voice/SKILL.md
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 ---
 name: voice
 description: |
-  Multi-pass prose editor with three modes. General mode (default) edits arbitrary writing — research notes, essays, anyone's README prose — by walking 31 patterns: Wikipedia's Signs of AI Writing patterns plus universal good-writing rules (long-word → short-word, active-over-passive, comma splices, cliché flag, jargon-fragment-in-prose rewrite, corporate-speak nominalizations). Prose mode adds Craig's writing-voice patterns for prose he authors or sends — emails, documents, notes — on top of general (em-dash zero-tolerance, no-emphasis-formatting, contractions, semicolons → periods, sentence-split, felt-experience cut, sentence-fragment rewrite, terse-cut, single-sentence cadence, parenthetical asides, declarative-register marker). Personal mode is for publish artifacts only (commits, PR titles + bodies, PR review comments) and adds the artifact-mechanics patterns on top of prose (first-person rewrite, public-artifact scope flag, praise/correction asymmetry, finding stems, comma budget) plus per-artifact terseness budgets. Total 46 patterns; one editorial review covers all relevant ones for the chosen mode, with an attestation receipt for the high-recurrence set. Replaces the standalone humanizer skill. Use when editing prose. Do NOT use for code, structured data, or plain bullet lists where fragments are valid.
+  Multi-pass prose editor with three modes. General mode (default) edits arbitrary writing — research notes, essays, anyone's README prose — by walking 31 patterns: Wikipedia's Signs of AI Writing patterns plus universal good-writing rules (long-word → short-word, active-over-passive, comma splices, cliché flag, jargon-fragment-in-prose rewrite, corporate-speak nominalizations). Prose mode adds Craig's writing-voice patterns for prose he authors or sends — emails, documents, notes — on top of general (em-dash zero-tolerance, no-emphasis-formatting, contractions, semicolons → periods, sentence-split, felt-experience cut, sentence-fragment rewrite, terse-cut, single-sentence cadence, parenthetical asides, declarative-register marker). Personal mode is for publish artifacts only (commits, PR titles + bodies, PR review comments) and adds the artifact-mechanics patterns on top of prose (first-person rewrite, public-artifact scope flag, praise/correction asymmetry, finding stems, comma budget) plus per-artifact terseness budgets. Prose mode also carries one correspondence-only pattern (recipient-priority ordering) that personal mode skips. Total 47 patterns; one editorial review covers all relevant ones for the chosen mode, with an attestation receipt for the high-recurrence set. Replaces the standalone humanizer skill. Use when editing prose. Do NOT use for code, structured data, or plain bullet lists where fragments are valid.
 allowed-tools:
   - Read
   - Write
@@ -31,8 +31,8 @@ This skill is split across two files by design.
 Three modes determine which patterns to walk. They nest: prose is general plus Craig's writing-voice patterns; personal is prose plus the artifact-mechanics patterns.
 
 - **General** (default) — apply patterns **#1-31**. Use for writing whose author isn't Craig and that isn't a publish artifact: research notes you're editing for someone else, a quoted passage, README prose for a shared project, any third-party text. Output is well-edited human-sounding prose, but does not impose Craig's voice (first-person, contractions, em-dash elimination) — those conflict with academic, literary, or formal registers that aren't his.
-- **Prose** — apply **#1-31** plus the patterns tagged **(prose + personal)**: em-dash zero-tolerance (#13), contractions (#34), semicolons → periods (#33), sentence-split (#35), felt-experience cut (#36), sentence-fragment rewrite (#37), terse-cut (#38), no-emphasis-formatting (#41), single-sentence cadence (#43), parenthetical asides (#44), and the declarative-register marker (#45). Use for prose Craig authors or sends in his own voice that isn't a publish artifact: emails, documents he writes or hands to someone, working notes, journal entries. This is the mode that finally applies his actual writing voice to the documents he most wants it on. It skips the artifact-mechanics patterns (#32, #39, #40, #42) — those assume a commit or PR and misfire on free prose (a document is legitimately third-person; a journal has no public-scope concern; praise/correction asymmetry and finding stems are PR-review rules).
-- **Personal** — apply all **#1-46**. Use only for publish artifacts: commits, PR titles + bodies, and PR review comments. Adds the artifact-mechanics patterns (#32 first-person rewrite, #39 public-artifact scope flag, #40 praise/correction asymmetry, #42 finding stems, #46 comma budget) on top of everything prose mode walks.
+- **Prose** — apply **#1-31** plus the patterns tagged **(prose + personal)**: em-dash zero-tolerance (#13), contractions (#34), semicolons → periods (#33), sentence-split (#35), felt-experience cut (#36), sentence-fragment rewrite (#37), terse-cut (#38), no-emphasis-formatting (#41), single-sentence cadence (#43), parenthetical asides (#44), and the declarative-register marker (#45) — plus **#47 (recipient-priority ordering)** when the piece is correspondence (email, Signal, a letter). Use for prose Craig authors or sends in his own voice that isn't a publish artifact: emails, documents he writes or hands to someone, working notes, journal entries. This is the mode that finally applies his actual writing voice to the documents he most wants it on. It skips the artifact-mechanics patterns (#32, #39, #40, #42) — those assume a commit or PR and misfire on free prose (a document is legitimately third-person; a journal has no public-scope concern; praise/correction asymmetry and finding stems are PR-review rules).
+- **Personal** — apply **#1-46**. Use only for publish artifacts: commits, PR titles + bodies, and PR review comments. Adds the artifact-mechanics patterns (#32 first-person rewrite, #39 public-artifact scope flag, #40 praise/correction asymmetry, #42 finding stems, #46 comma budget) on top of everything prose mode walks. #47 is the lone exception to the nesting — it is correspondence-only, and a publish artifact is never a reply to someone's news, so personal mode stops at #46.
 
 If invoked without a mode argument, default to general. Prose mode is invoked explicitly with `/voice prose` (emails, authored documents). Personal-context callers (`commits.md` publish flow, `respond-to-cj-comments.md`) invoke `/voice personal`.
 
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ Terse is a budget, not an adjective. Each publish-artifact type has a target sha
 
 When given text to edit:
 
-1. **Identify which patterns apply** — Scan for the patterns numbered below. General mode walks #1-31 only. Prose mode adds the patterns tagged **(prose + personal)**. Personal mode adds those *and* the ones tagged **(personal only)** — i.e. all 46.
+1. **Identify which patterns apply** — Scan for the patterns numbered below. General mode walks #1-31 only. Prose mode adds the patterns tagged **(prose + personal)**, plus #47 when the piece is correspondence. Personal mode adds the **(personal only)** ones instead — patterns #1-46, never #47.
 2. **Rewrite problematic sections** — Replace each detected pattern with its rewrite.
 3. **Preserve meaning** — Keep the core message intact.
 4. **Maintain voice** — Match the intended tone (formal, casual, technical, academic, literary).
@@ -296,7 +296,7 @@ See `voice/references/voice-profile.org` §31 for problem, basis, examples, and
 
 ## Craig's Voice (prose + personal modes)
 
-These patterns carry Craig's writing voice. Most apply in **both** prose mode (emails, documents, notes he authors) and personal mode (commits, PRs, PR comments) — tagged **(prose + personal)**. Five are publish-artifact-specific — tagged **(personal only)** — because they assume a commit or PR and misfire on free prose: #32 (first-person rewrite) wrongly imposes "I did X" voice on a document that's legitimately third-person, #39 (public-artifact scope flag) has nothing to guard in a private journal, #40 (praise/correction asymmetry) and #42 (finding stems) are PR-review rules, and #46 (comma budget) is scoped to publish artifacts by Craig's 2026-07-20 directive. General mode skips all of them — it edits text that isn't Craig's, where contractions, em-dash elimination, and first-person would conflict with academic, literary, or formal registers.
+These patterns carry Craig's writing voice. Most apply in **both** prose mode (emails, documents, notes he authors) and personal mode (commits, PRs, PR comments) — tagged **(prose + personal)**. Five are publish-artifact-specific — tagged **(personal only)** — because they assume a commit or PR and misfire on free prose: #32 (first-person rewrite) wrongly imposes "I did X" voice on a document that's legitimately third-person, #39 (public-artifact scope flag) has nothing to guard in a private journal, #40 (praise/correction asymmetry) and #42 (finding stems) are PR-review rules, and #46 (comma budget) is scoped to publish artifacts by Craig's 2026-07-20 directive. One — #47 (recipient-priority ordering) — runs the other way: prose-only and narrower still, firing solely on correspondence, because ordering a reply around the recipient's news has no meaning for a commit or a document addressed to nobody. General mode skips all of them — it edits text that isn't Craig's, where contractions, em-dash elimination, and first-person would conflict with academic, literary, or formal registers.
 
 ### 32. First-Person Voice Rewrite [personal]
 
@@ -366,7 +366,7 @@ See `voice/references/voice-profile.org` §42 for problem, basis, examples, and
 
 ### 43. Single-Sentence Paragraph Cadence Is a Feature [prose · personal]
 
-**Rule.** A one-sentence paragraph is a finished thought, not a fragment. Break paragraphs after one complete thought when the next thought shifts angle, even if both are short. 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).
+**Rule.** A one-sentence paragraph is a finished thought, not a fragment. "Shifts angle" means shifts *topic*: break paragraphs at a topic boundary, even when both sides are one sentence. Within a single topic, do the opposite — consolidate its sentences into one paragraph even when each is a complete thought, up to a ceiling of about five or six sentences, past which find a natural break. The never-merge instruction protects the break *between* topics, which is where Craig's cadence lives (corpus: 41-74% of his paragraphs are exactly one sentence, depending on register); it never licenses fragmenting one topic across several paragraphs. See #47 for the ordering of those topics in a reply.
 
 See `voice/references/voice-profile.org` §43 for problem, basis, examples, and history.
 
@@ -388,10 +388,16 @@ See `voice/references/voice-profile.org` §45 for problem, basis, examples, and
 
 See `voice/references/voice-profile.org` §46 for problem, basis, examples, and history.
 
+### 47. Recipient-Priority Ordering [prose — correspondence only]
+
+**Rule.** 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, and a direct question they asked can sort *below* personal news they shared, because the news is what they care about. Leading with the easy answer reads as transactional. Correspondence-scoped: it needs a recipient, so it fires on email, Signal, and letters, and has no referent in a journal, a working note, or any document addressed to nobody. This is the one prose-mode pattern that does not carry into personal mode — a commit or PR review is not a reply to someone's news.
+
+See `voice/references/voice-profile.org` §47 for problem, basis, examples, and history.
+
 ## Process
 
 1. Read the input text carefully. Confirm the mode (general, prose, or personal) — invocation argument or context. If a file path was given, that file is the deliverable: the final text gets written back to it in step 7.
-2. Walk patterns 1-31 in general mode; add the (prose + personal) patterns in prose mode; walk all 46 patterns in personal mode.
+2. Walk patterns 1-31 in general mode; add the (prose + personal) patterns in prose mode, plus #47 when the piece is correspondence; walk patterns 1-46 in personal mode.
 3. For each pattern, scan the text. If a match is found, rewrite it according to the pattern's rule. Patterns #39 and #45 emit flags without rewriting.
 4. After walking all patterns, ensure the revised text:
    - Sounds natural when read aloud
@@ -488,6 +494,7 @@ This skill draws from:
 - Garner, *Modern English Usage* — pattern #26 (word-pair preferences).
 - Craig's voice rules from `claude-rules/commits.md` (Voice and Focus section) — patterns #32-42, split across prose mode (his authored prose and email) and personal mode (publish artifacts).
 - Craig's directive, 2026-07-20 (archsetup session) — pattern #46 (comma budget), personal mode.
+- Craig's edit of a Signal reply, 2026-07-23 (home session) — pattern #47 (recipient-priority ordering) and the #43 topic-vs-angle calibration, prose/correspondence.
 - Corpus measurement (2026-05-29 phases 1-2, documented in the profile) — patterns #43-45 and the calibration notes on #7, #13, #33.
 
 Key insight (Wikipedia, paraphrased): LLMs use statistical algorithms to guess what should come next. The result tends toward the most statistically likely text that applies to the widest variety of cases. Patterns #1-25 detect that signature.