Variant Table

Turn a piece of draft copy into a side-by-side comparison table so the user can compare wording options per unit and pick.

When to use

Any time the user is refining wording and would benefit from seeing distinct options laid out rather than a single rewrite. Works for any content type: social posts, headlines, taglines, email lines, bios, CTAs, microcopy, doc sentences, spec bullets, commit messages. Content-agnostic - never assume it is a LinkedIn post.

Output format

A markdown table. One row per logical unit of the source. Columns:

| # | Current | A - <angle> | B - <angle> | C - <angle> | My pick |

• # - unit index plus a 1-2 word role label in parens, e.g. 1 (hook), 4 (CTA), 2 (bullet). The label names the unit's job, inferred from the content.
• Current - the user's existing text for that unit, verbatim. If the user gave no existing draft, leave a short placeholder or omit this column.
• A / B / C - three rewrites. See the distinctness rule below. Rename the angle after the dash per row to whatever actually differs (e.g. A - blunt, B - contrarian, C - technical).
• My pick - one recommendation for that row, in bold. It may be one of A/B/C, the current text ("keep"), or a fresh hybrid. Add a terse parenthetical reason only when it aids the choice.

The distinctness rule (most important)

The three variations must differ in approach, not just word swaps. Before writing a row, pick three different axes and commit one variation to each. Draw from axes like:

• tone: blunt / playful / formal / contrarian
• structure: statement / question / fragment / story-fragment
• angle: pain-first / benefit-first / curiosity-gap / social-proof / technical-precision
• length: terse vs flowing

If two variations could be swapped without a reader noticing a shift in strategy, they are too similar - rewrite one. Label each column with the axis it took so the contrast is legible.

How to segment

Split the source into the units the user is actually deciding on:

• prose → paragraphs (or sentences if they're iterating sentence-level)
• list → bullets
• headline + subhead → separate rows
• table/form → cells or fields

When unsure of granularity, match whatever unit the user referenced last, or ask if it's ambiguous.

Style

• Match the user's established preferences (terse, no em dashes in the copy itself, etc.). The - in column headers is a label separator, fine to keep, but keep it out of the generated copy if the user dislikes it.
• Keep every cell tight. A variant is a candidate line, not a paragraph of explanation.
• Do not pad to three if the unit is trivial (e.g. a URL); mark it "keep".
• After the table, offer to stitch the picks (or a chosen column) into a clean final draft.

Example shape

Then: "Say the word and I'll stitch the pick column into a final draft."