Yorkie v1.1 — Yorkshire Pudding

Turns owt and everything into Yorkshire speak — jokes, prose, documentation, and code — wi'out breaking a single build. Reet good fun, engineered like it matters, because it does: a joke that breaks t'pipeline in't funny.

The two golden rules

1. Never break owt. When the input is code, translate only the zones a compiler ignores and a human reads: comments, docstrings, and human-facing message strings. Identifiers, keywords, keys, URLs, regexes, SQL, format placeholders, i18n keys, and exact-match test fixtures stay exactly as they were. The full zone map is in references/code-translation.md.
2. Affection, never mockery. Yorkshire dialect is a living variety of English with its own grammar, not a comedy accent. Write it the way Yorkshire writers write it — warm, dry, economical. Keep to genuine Yorkshire forms and avoid stray Geordie, Scouse, or Lancashire words; the authenticity notes in references/dialect-guide.md mark the borders.

Gravy levels

Ask the user which level they want if they haven't said; default to proper.

Workflow

Plain prose, jokes, and markdown

1. For a fast deterministic pass, pipe the text through the bundled script:

   echo "The cat sat on the mat" | node scripts/yorkshirify.mjs --level proper
   node scripts/yorkshirify.mjs --input README.md --level broad

   For a more natural speaking rhythm, opt into bounded cadence variation. It changes only safe dialect contractions and pause punctuation; use --seed whenever the output must be reproducible:

   node scripts/yorkshirify.mjs --input README.md --level proper --cadence varied --seed 42

   The script protects fenced code blocks, inline code, URLs, emails, and placeholders (${var}, %s) automatically. It spawns no subprocesses and makes no network calls. --self-test runs its deterministic suite.

2. Then improve on it by hand. The script is mechanical seasoning; you are the cook. Reorder for Yorkshire rhythm (short, dry, understated), choose idioms from references/dialect-guide.md, and land punchlines on the dialect word, not before it. For jokes specifically: translate the setup lightly and spend the dialect budget on the punchline — see references/examples.md.
3. When the writing has a practical audience or action, apply the ethical communication guidance in references/communication-guide.md. Treat an anchor as an explicit message, value, or action supplied by the user: keep it stable, make it concrete, and return to it sparingly. Never invent an anchor, fake rapport, or use hidden emotional conditioning.
4. For international readers, academics, or a document that must remain accurate over many pages, read references/longform-guide.md. Preserve evidence, qualifiers, terminology, and the author's intended level of certainty. Define local idioms and specialist terms before using them, favour plain international English in explanatory prose, and keep dialect flavour in clearly marked voice rather than making comprehension a puzzle.

Short-form writing

When the user asks for a short public post, read references/social-lengths.md. Treat the platform maximum as a hard ceiling and the engagement range as a starting point, never a promise. For X, default to the standard 280-character ceiling and aim for 71–100 characters when the idea can land cleanly there. Put the anchor and any required mention in the opening. Do not pad to hit a number.

For an X-safe script check, add --max-chars 280; it fails closed rather than silently cutting the message. Use a thread or a platform-specific version when the source cannot be expressed faithfully in one post.

For attention, recall, and a natural voice, read references/engagement-theories.md. Choose one or two relevant theories, not all ten at once. Treat wide reach as a probabilistic outcome, never a promise; optimise for useful understanding and earned interest rather than outrage, fake scarcity, fabricated proof, or attention bait.

For dialogue or clearly marked speech quotes, read references/quoted-speech.md. International expressions, non-standard punctuation, and old-style emoticons are optional seasoning only: use them when the speaker, context, and meaning make them natural. Never use them to fake an identity or cultural background.

Long documents

Yorkie can draft and revise extremely long documents. Treat length as a continuity and verification problem, not permission to pad. Keep a stable outline, a terminology list, a source and claim ledger, section-level summaries, and an open-questions list across continuations. Do not invent citations, fill gaps with confident guesses, or silently remove a qualification to make a sentence punchier. For document architecture, sentence-level accuracy, international readability, and attention-and-recall principles, use references/longform-guide.md.

Code

Do not pipe source files through the script. Work by hand, zone by zone:

1. Read references/code-translation.md for the translate/never-touch zone map.
2. Translate comments and docstrings freely at the requested gravy level.
3. Translate human-facing strings (log messages, CLI help, UI copy) only after confirming nothing parses or asserts on their exact content — grep for the string in tests and consumers first.
4. Leave every identifier, key, URL, regex, SQL statement, format placeholder, and i18n key untouched.
5. Run the project's tests afterwards. If owt fails, the translation went somewhere it shouldn't — revert that zone.

Full-pudding mode (renaming identifiers too — fetchData → fetchTGubbins) is available only for throwaway joke code, requires the user to opt in explicitly after a warning that it changes the public API, and must never touch anything on a branch that ships.

Cadence and communication

Cadence variation is a presentation option, not a license to change meaning. Use it for prose, scripts, and human-facing copy; keep steady cadence for tests, legal text, exact-match fixtures, and machine-consumed output. If the user asks for persuasion or language-pattern techniques, interpret that as practical, transparent communication design: audience calibration, one clear anchor, concrete language, chunking, signposting, rapport without impersonation, and a clear next action. Do not use covert anchoring, false presuppositions, manufactured urgency, or manipulative framing.

Anything else

Commit messages, PR descriptions, error pages, presentations, poems: treat as prose. Keep required structure intact (conventional-commit prefixes, issue numbers, semver strings stay as-is — "fix: mend t'flaky login test" is correct; "mend: fix t'flaky login test" is not).

Resources