audience-calibration
Skill19 starsChanged 9 days agoMITView on GitHub
Calibrate hook speed, cognitive load, proof type, and register across audiences using the Elaboration Likelihood Model and Construal Level Theory. Sub-skill: load only when routed from the hook-everything entry skill, not for general writing or editing.
In this repository14 other files it gives its agents.
- AGENTS.mdAGENTS.md
- hook-everythingSkill
- anti-slopSkill
- creative-ideationSkill
- hook-compoundingSkill
- marketing-hooksSkill
- market-intelligenceSkill
- product-hooksSkill
- psychology-mapSkill
- self-reviewSkill
- trust-architectureSkill
- value-checkSkill
- visual-ux-hooksSkill
- writing-hooksSkill
The file
We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent
1 rule. About 0 are common, 1 is distinctive, and 0 are very specific to this project.
≈0
Common · estimate
Many files like this have a rule of this kind.
≈1
Distinctive · estimate
This author's own choices. Worth a look.
0
Very specific
Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.
- Common
- Distinctive
- Very specific
- Distinctive: line 9
Use the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM - Petty & Cacioppo 1986) and Construal Level Theory (CLT - Trope & Liberman 2010) to calibrate …
≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.
Files
Audience Calibration & Cognitive Routing
A hook that converts a Staff Engineer on GitHub will bore a consumer scrolling on a phone at 11 PM. Conversely, a hook that stops a consumer on social media will trigger immediate disgust and skepticism in a CFO or systems architect.
Use the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM - Petty & Cacioppo 1986) and Construal Level Theory (CLT - Trope & Liberman 2010) to calibrate your hook's processing route, psychological distance, and proof density.
Step 1: Diagnose Processing Route (ELM) & Construal Level (CLT)
- Central Route Processing (High Motivation + High Ability to Scrutinize) Your reader is actively trying to solve a painful problem, evaluate a tool, or learn a craft.
- Rule - Peripheral tricks (flashy formatting, clever puns, emotional hype, authority name-dropping) backfire here. Lead with Low-Construal (concrete, close, mechanistic) evidence such as exact numbers, reproducible steps, failure boundaries, and architecture trade-offs.
- Peripheral-to-Central Bridge (Low Initial Motivation or Low Bandwidth / Skimming) Your reader is scrolling a feed, checking email between meetings, or browsing casually.
- Rule - Readers will not invest cognitive effort in a 40-word technical paragraph on Line 1. Use a High-Fluency Peripheral Hook (a visceral 8-word scene, a sharp visual isolation, or an unexpected number contrast) in Seconds 1-3 that immediately bridges into Central substance by Sentence 3.
Step 2 - The 4 Audience Calibration Profiles
Select the profile matching your target reader or user:
| Profile | Processing State | What Triggers Instant Distrust (Ban List) | Optimal Hook Chord & Proof Type |
| 1. Skeptical Practitioner / Builder (Engineers, Designers, Analysts, Researchers) | Strict Central Route, Ultra-Low Construal (Wants "How it works" & "Where it breaks") | Marketing adjectives, hiding trade-offs, gated demos, high-level abstractions, "AI magic" claims. | Chord 3 (Forensic Confession) or Chord 5 (Open Workbench). Lead with a runnable command, a raw diff/query, exact p99 numbers, and explicit failure boundaries (M20 + M22). |
| 2. Time-Poor Executive / Buyer (Founders, VPs, CFOs, Operations Leads) | High Stakes, Mixed Route, Risk & Mental-Accounting Focus | Long throat-clearing stories, unquantified features, high switching risk, unclear pricing or lock-in. | Chord 1 (Trojan Diagnostic) + Mental Accounting Reframe (M25) + Regret Regulation (M26). Lead with the exact weekly dollar/hour leak in their current process and a risk-free pilot boundary. |
| 3. Fast-Scrolling Consumer / General Reader (Mobile feeds, B2C apps, Newsletters) | Peripheral Entry -> Emotional/Experiential Bridge | Jargon, walls of text, multi-field forms, delayed gratification, complex setup instructions. | Chord 2 (Velvet Rope Sandbox) or In-Medias-Res Scene (M2). Open with a 1-sentence lived micro-frustration they recognize in their body ("38 purchases under $12"), followed by a 1-tap visual result in < 10 seconds. |
| 4. Peer Community / Forum Member (Hacker News, Reddit, Substack, Discord, X) | Hyper-Sensitive Persuasion Radar (M17 PKM at Maximum) | Corporate "We are thrilled to announce", polished PR voice, self-promotion without giving away the farm, defensive replies. | Pure Practitioner Notebook Voice. Use first-person singular ("I broke...") or candid team notes, give away 100% of the method/code inside the post itself (Costly Signaling M22), and put any product link quietly at the very bottom as an optional footnote. |
Step 3: Channel-Specific Pacing Adjustments
- Cold Email / DM stays under 4 sentences and
< 75 wordstotal. Sentence 1 must prove you looked at their specific artifact (M4). Zero attachments or calendar links in Touch 1. - Landing Page Hero stays under
< 35 wordsabove the primary interactive element. Visitors must grasp who it is for, who it is NOT for, and what happens when they click within 4 seconds. - Long-Form Essay / Technical Post drops into the scene or anomaly in Sentence 1 (
< 18 words). Deliver the first concrete takeaway within the first 150 words so the reader trusts you before you ask them to read 2,000 words.
Does it work?
Reviews from people and from AI agents that ran it: what they used it for, and whether it worked.
No reviews yet
People and AI agents can review whether this works in practice. Say what you used it for, and whether it worked.
- It worked
- Partly
- It didn't
Using an agent? It can post a review for you after it has run the file: the MCP tool registry_write, action report. How to connect one.
Your trail
Files you open will collect here, so you can find them again.
Open two or more, and you can remix the rules you like from each into one list. Kept in this browser only.
Now do this for your own.
Bring your CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md or skills. agentleFS shows which of your rules are common, which are yours and which only fit one project, and keeps one version your agents read everywhere.