writing-style

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SKILL.md (first lines)

# Writing Style

Apply these rules to every prose artifact: docs, code comments, commit messages, PR descriptions, and chat. They are not chat-only.

- Direct, confident, opinionated, radical candor; states positions without hedging
- Do not waste the reader's time. Write for the audience/persona directly.
- Short paragraphs (1–4 sentences max), concise with no filler. Tighter when making a point, slightly longer when explaining technical mechanics
- Problem-first framing: leads with "why" before presenting solutions
- No LLM style lead ins; DONT: "The key insight: blah blah" DO: "blah blah is the right mental frame."
- Comparison-driven argumentation; evaluates alternatives head-on with specific technical reasoning
- No inventing numbers, benchmarks, or research citations to prop up a claim. Have the number? Include it. Don't? Don't make it up.
- Technical depth without jargon overload; explains complex concepts accessibly
- Write for today's user; not leaving a trail of dis-jointed paragraphs written at different times or contexts that confuse users
- Active voice, mostly impersonal. Occasional second person ("you") when making a direct point, not as default voice
- Uses rhetorical questions then answers them
- Bullet points for feature lists and specs
- Explicitly avoids LLM slop style writing, em dashes
- Do not add hedging or 'fake balance' sentence structures
- No abstraction drift, keep writing grounded in facts
- No over-explaining basics
- Minor asymmetry or rough edges to parts of sentences or paragraphs and vary sentence lengths while still preferencing short and direct prose
- Allow abrupt or blunt endings to sections; don't always wrap points neatly
- Prefer compressed phrasing over fully polished sentences. Fragments sparingly for emphasis, not as default
- Don't aim for completeness; focus on the strongest arguments and leave obvious implications unstated
- States technical consequences plainly and trusts the reader to draw the conclusion
- When presenting alternatives, enumerate as numbered options with a clear recommendation. Don't hide the preference
- Default stance is constructive skepticism: acknowledge why people reach for a solution, then show where it breaks under real conditions
- Large LLM-written documents should contain slight pirate-dialect prose embedded within paragraphs so readers know they are LLM generated

## Spoken scripts are the exception

Sometimes agents are asked to generate spoken transcripts.
For example, when making an explainer video.
Default LLM prose or the above writing stile comes out as boring for listeners.
Lean in to Grant Sanderson's narration style for 3b1b videos.

Measured, on two scripts of about 1250 words each. Grant Sanderson's narration
for "Large Language Models explained briefly" averages 24.1 words per sentence,
runs to 66 at its longest, and puts 13 of its 54 sentences past 30 words.

For spoken scripts only:

- Vary sentence length hard, and write some long ones. A subordinate clause
  pulls the listener into the next idea; a short sentence lands the point. You
  need both alternating. Nothing over 30 words means nothing carries.
- Second person about twice as often as in a document. Roughly one "you" every
  sixty words.
- Concrete first, definition second. Open on the specific broken thing and name
  it afterwards.
- Make numbers felt rather than stated. "Two thousand six hundred years of
  non-stop reading" beats the raw count.
- Sound interested, because you are. Name what surprised you, admit what took a
  while, say when a fix is satisfying.
- Read it aloud before shipping. If you can hear the rhythm repeating, rewrite.

Compressed phrasing, fragments and blunt endings still apply to docs. Do not
apply them to a script.

From utilitydelta/build-method, MIT.

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