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--- voice/SKILL.md 2026-07-23 23:24:04.995899857 -0500
+++ /tmp/skill.proposed 2026-07-23 23:29:48.167295513 -0500
@@ -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. 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.
+ Multi-pass prose editor with three modes. General mode (default) edits arbitrary writing — research notes, essays, anyone's README prose — by walking 32 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, term-translation density). 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 48 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
@@ -30,9 +30,9 @@
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.
+- **General** (default) — apply patterns **#1-31** and **#48** (term-translation density, a universal clarity rule that happens to carry a later number). 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) — 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.
+- **Personal** — apply **#1-46** and **#48**. 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 @@
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)**, plus #47 when the piece is correspondence. Personal mode adds the **(personal only)** ones instead — patterns #1-46, never #47.
+1. **Identify which patterns apply** — Scan for the patterns numbered below. General mode walks #1-31 and #48. 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 and #48, 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).
@@ -394,10 +394,16 @@
See `voice/references/voice-profile.org` §47 for problem, basis, examples, and history.
+### 48. Term-Translation Density [general]
+
+**Rule.** A sentence that forces the reader to stop and translate more than one specialized term (an acronym, a coined phrase, a product name) is too dense. One such term is fine; two or more in one sentence means rewrite it: split the sentence, gloss one term inline in a parenthetical (#44), or drop to plain language. The test is the reader's parse, not the writer's familiarity, and it is audience-relative — a term the whole audience shares (SAR to a defense team) carries no translation load, while a term only the writer holds (a coined "detect-then-contextualize", or ViT and VLM stacked in one clause) does. Distinct from #7 (which flags specific AI-vocabulary words) and #30 (which rewrites telegraphic fragments): this one measures jargon density per sentence against the reader's translation load.
+
+See `voice/references/voice-profile.org` §48 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, plus #47 when the piece is correspondence; walk patterns 1-46 in personal mode.
+2. Walk patterns 1-31 and 48 in general mode; add the (prose + personal) patterns in prose mode, plus #47 when the piece is correspondence; walk patterns 1-46 and 48 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
@@ -495,6 +501,7 @@
- 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.
+- Craig's edit of a customer-partner email, 2026-07-23 (work session) — pattern #48 (term-translation density), general.
- 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.
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