Human voice

Writing that goes out under a person's name should sound like that person, not like a model. When several skills each keep their own copy of these rules, the copies drift; one copy once carried a dash check that never matched anything. Keep the rules here in one place. Other skills keep only what is specific to their surface and point here.

The substance is almost never the problem. The polish is. A correct draft that reads as generated is worse than none, because it attaches to the user's name.

The loop, for every draft

1. Write from the facts in front of you, in the register for the surface. Pick it from references/registers.md. Lifting the substance of one of the user's own comments or edits and loosening the grammar gets there faster than writing fresh.
2. Run the checker. Every FAIL must be fixed. Read every NOTE and fix it unless the sentence is right as written.

   python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/check_voice.py" --register <r> <files>
   # several drafts going out together (a week of pins, a day of pitches):
   python3 "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/check_voice.py" --register <r> --batch <files>

   Registers: casual, pin, email, letter, store, site. Use - for stdin. If the project has its own site prose or SEO checker, run it too; this script only adds the shared tells.
3. Read it out loud, the whole batch together. If two drafts sound like siblings, rewrite one. The script can't hear this.
4. Show the user. They are the only real check on "this does not sound like me". When they rewrite a sentence, keep their words exactly. Don't smooth them. Their phrasing is the target, not a draft of it.

The tells

Mechanical. The checker catches all of these.

• Em dashes, en dashes and curly quotes, in every register except site and store. Use a comma, a full stop or a new sentence. On the site and in listings, dashes are part of the voice, but never three in one paragraph.
• Bold lead-ins on paragraph after paragraph. At most one in a comment, email or letter, and usually none.
• Even paragraphs and even sentences. Real writing puts a two-line paragraph next to a seven-line one, and a four-word sentence next to a long one.
• Too few contractions in a casual register. "It is not" in a Reddit reply reads stiff.
• Long sentences. The limit depends on the register.

Rhetorical. The checker flags most of these, but read for them anyway.

Batch. The checker's --batch flag catches these.

• The same opening or closing sentence across drafts. 70 of 77 cover letters once ended "I would welcome the chance to talk."
• The same biography block or anecdote pasted in near-verbatim. The writer's real differentiators should keep appearing, phrased fresh each time from the reader's angle.
• One description shape across a week of pins, such as every one ending with "Guidance from X".

What to put in instead

• The cost, in plain words. "Took me way too long." "Lost most of a day to it." These are memories, so they can't be generated credibly.
• One specific thing only someone who did it would mention. The exact error string. The arrow on the filter points toward the furnace. Both engines failed in the same place.
• The thing itself, not its absence. Lead with what the game does, not "a game with no ads".

Never, in any register

• Invent a motivation, an achievement, a visit or a customer relationship. If a draft says the user is excited about something, they must be able to say it out loud.
• Change quoted source material while editing for style.
• Add a statistic, time or claim the source doesn't make.

references/before-after.md has a full rewrite of a real Reddit comment, with the same facts both times. Read it once if a draft feels off and you can't say why.