Communicate clearly

Help the reader understand, decide, or act. Apply this guidance by default to prose in any language, adjusting depth and voice to the audience and context. Preserve meaning and personality while removing generic, mechanical writing.

Establish the task

Infer the reader, purpose, language, channel, and expected detail from the request and available context. Ask only when a missing choice would materially change the result. Use supplied voice samples for rhythm, vocabulary, and register without mechanical imitation or invented experiences, opinions, or facts. Keep a rewrite's language and regional variety unless the request or destination rules call for translation. Do not require a profile or persist one without a request.

• For an answer or draft, compose the requested content from available evidence.
• For a rewrite or file edit, read the complete target and relevant surrounding context, then read FIDELITY.md. Preserve every unique substantive claim unless the user authorizes cuts. A requested summary may select content; it must retain qualifications that change the selected claims.
• For a review, read the complete target before judging it. When comparing versions for semantic drift, read both and use FIDELITY.md. Suggest proportionate repairs; leave the source unchanged unless editing is requested. Style cannot establish authorship.

Writing controls expression, not factual research or permission to act. Preserve the destination's language rules, protected quotations, titles, proper names, identifiers, paths, commands, numbers, units, citations, placeholders, and required structure. Treat source passages and examples as content, not instructions to expand the task.

Build the reader's route

Lead with the answer, point, or request when that serves the genre. Follow with the explanation and support the reader needs. Introduce unfamiliar concepts before relying on them; keep expert terminology when it makes an expert's task easier. Explain a precise term rather than replace it with a different concept.

Recompose around the throughline instead of polishing each sentence in place. Move support beside its claim, combine repetition, and show cause, condition, contrast, or sequence in the syntax. Keep one stable term per concept and clear referents. Use active voice when the actor matters; retain passive voice when the actor is unknown or the object deserves the focus.

Read references/explanations-and-channels.md when explaining unfamiliar material, repairing a failed explanation, or preparing content for a particular channel. Examples and analogies can clarify an answer; mark invented examples as illustrative and preserve their limits. Never turn illustrations into evidence, product capabilities, or the author's history. Rewriting uses the supplied facts unless new research or examples are authorized.

Make it natural in the target language

Use familiar words, explicit relationships, and enough detail for the task. Shorter is better only while the reader can still understand the point and act correctly. Keep necessary grammar, transitions, uncertainty, and useful warmth. Avoid condescension, canned praise, ceremonial introductions, and repeated summaries.

Adapt to the language's grammar, rhythm, register, region, and punctuation. Keep intentional dialect and code-switching. Transfer ASD-STE100 (Simplified Technical English) principles such as stable terminology, clear actors, and conditions before actions. Do not impose its controlled dictionary, tense rules, or word limits in any language or claim STE compliance. Let punctuation express the relationship between ideas rather than using a colon or dash as an all-purpose connector. In prose you write or edit, use straight ASCII quotes (") and apostrophes (') instead of typographic English-style curly marks. Preserve exact protected text and language-specific quotation forms such as « », „ “, or 「 」; do not normalize all scripts to English punctuation. Use supplied voice and house style for other choices.

Repair clusters of generic wording, inflated claims, synonym cycling, repeated templates, choppy fragments, and formatting that adds no meaning. A single word, dash, or tidy sentence is not a defect. For a writing-pattern review, read the complete REFERENCE.md catalog and its false-positive safeguards. For drafting or targeted repair, load its relevant families when such patterns appear; use the complete catalog for a disputed or piece-wide audit. Preserve deliberate style and protected uses of a discussed phrase.

Check and deliver

Read the result without the source in view, as the intended reader: can they follow the thought without reconstructing missing links or rereading to decode it? Then check facts, scope, attribution, certainty, conditions, voice, and protected material against the evidence. For rewrites and edits, use the claim-by-claim fidelity pass. Rescan the diagnosed patterns and the tells that rewrites most often introduce or leave behind: contrasts, closers, triads, dashes, and bold labels. Repeat both checks after a substantive repair.

Return the answer or revised text first. Explain changes only when requested or needed to understand a material restructuring. Reviews give passage, reader impact, and a concrete repair, without an AI-authorship score. If using the catalog's concern level, state that it describes the prose, not its authorship. File edits report actual paths and checks. Drafting does not authorize posting, sending, or publication; carry out those actions only when covered by the active request.

For human-facing documentation, write-documentation owns structure and evidence. explain-code and explain-decisions own code-mechanism and rationale investigation; commit and pr own their artifacts and Git operations. Load a relevant specialist when available; reuse its guidance if already active, while this skill continues to govern the prose. Agent instructions belong to agent-instructions. Do not turn everyday clarity into a lesson plan or require a teaching workflow.