Proofread

The last pass. Find what is still wrong and report it — without making new editorial decisions.

Scope: Typographical errors, dropped and duplicated words and lines, punctuation and spacing slips, lost or altered formatting, comparison damage between the edited text and the formatted file, consistency with the existing style sheet, and front and back matter completeness. Not prose improvement (line-edit); not grammar or style change (copyedit); not structure (developmental-edit).

Definition of done: the author can hand the errata list to a typesetter and know exactly what to change, where to change it, and why — with every remaining judgment call separated into queries, and a second-pass collation confirming the corrections landed.

Read This Before Using the Skill

Reading for meaning is exactly what hides typos. A language model repairs teh, form/from, and a doubled the as it goes, because it reads intent, not letters. Treat this skill as a mechanically reliable proofreader — systematic pattern searches, source comparison, category-by-category sweeps — and not as a substitute for a human final reader.

Practical consequences:

• For the pass before publication, use a human proofreader if you can.
• If you can't, at minimum run this pass in a different session or a different model from the one that copyedited. A proofreader who shares the copyeditor's blind spots is not a fresh reader.
• Expect plausible-word errors to survive — a missing article, a wrong-but-grammatical preposition, a swapped homophone in an idiomatic phrase. Say so in the report rather than implying the text is clean.

Non-negotiables

1. No new editorial decisions. The copyedit is finished. You correct; you do not improve.
2. The style sheet is law. Every existing style decision stands, even the ones you would not have made. A change that contradicts it is a query, not a correction.
3. Text must be frozen. Proofreading a file that is still being edited produces errata for text that no longer exists. Confirm the freeze, and re-proof anything that changed afterwards.
4. Three buckets only: a mechanical correction, a query, or a re-edit request routed upstream. Nothing else.
5. Never rewrite a sentence. If the prose is poor, that is not a typo — flag it for line-edit and move on.
6. Nothing is changed silently in the source. Corrections go to the errata list and the annotated proof.
7. Work the text, not your memory of it. Do not skip a passage because a prior pass covered it.

Inputs

• The manuscript or formatted proof files
• Required: the copyedit/style-sheet.md, and copyedit/clean/ or copyedit/tracked/ — the authoritative edited text
• Optional: line-edit/, editorial-review/, characters/*.md, MANUSCRIPT.md, ORDER.md, chapters.json, chapter properties (assets/templates/chapter-note.md)
• Optional: the formatted artifact — EPUB, PDF, print interior, or the author's exported .docx
• Pass type: manuscript proof (default), proof against source, or final proof (collation)
• Medium: manuscript, ebook, or print

Chapter properties. If chapter files carry YAML front matter (template: assets/templates/chapter-note.md), read it as author intent, not prose: never number it as a paragraph or quote it as text. type and chapter override filename classification and ordering; canon: false excludes a chapter; revision_stage below copyedited means the file is not ready — stop. A property that contradicts the text is a query, not a correction. Unknown properties are ignored, and properties are never written back to the source.

Output Contract

<project_folder>/proofread/
├── metadata.md
├── status.json
├── errata.md
├── queries.md
├── checks.md
├── summary.md
└── proofs/
    └── archive/

Never invent a second layout.

• errata.md is the typesetter hand-off: numbered, located, and unambiguous.
• queries.md holds anything requiring a decision, in the same format as copyedit/queries.md.
• checks.md records the document-level and production checks, pass or fail.
• proofs/ receives the annotated proof copies.

Pass Types

The third pass is not optional in print or ebook work. Corrections introduce errors; if nobody checks them, the last pass is the one that made things worse.

Workflow

0. Pre-flight

1. Verify the freeze. Compare the source last-modified times against the copyedit completion. If anything changed, say so and confirm before proceeding.
2. Verify the gate. If copyedit/queries.md has open queries, stop. Proofreading text that is about to change is wasted work.
3. Identify the pass type and medium.
4. Load and read copyedit/style-sheet.md — every answer you need about style is in it.
5. Report the manifest and confirm scope.
6. Validate ORDER.md / chapters.json if present (missing files, gaps, unlisted files). If both exist and disagree, ask which is authoritative.

1. Calibration

1. Read the style sheet completely, including the Do Not Change list. That list is your protection against "correcting" the author's deliberate choices.
2. Note what is not in the sheet. Anything the sheet does not settle is a query, not a decision.
3. Identify the recurring search targets: character names, invented terms, place names, numerals conventions, dash and ellipsis style, quote style.
4. Present your understanding of the conventions in a few lines and let the author correct you before you start.

2. Mechanical Sweep

Run the pattern checks in references/proofreading-checks.md. This is the part this skill does most reliably — exhaustive, systematic, and independent of whether you notice anything while reading.

Doubled words and punctuation, unbalanced quotation marks, mixed straight and curly quotes, double spaces, space before punctuation, missing space after punctuation, hyphen used where an en dash belongs, ellipsis inconsistency, stray [TK] and placeholders, chapter numbering sequence, repeated sentences and paragraphs.

Record every hit with a locator. These are almost always mechanical corrections.

3. Proof Against Source

Only when a formatted artifact exists. Compare it against the authoritative edited text, paragraph by paragraph, using references/conversion-errors.md.

This is the highest-value pass in the whole skill: text loss, scrambled paragraphs, dropped italics, missing diacritics, and substituted quote characters are invisible to a read-through but obvious in a comparison.

4. Read-Through Passes

Read the text with one category of error in mind per pass, not everything at once — the technique in references/reading-techniques.md. A pass for dropped words, a pass for punctuation, a pass for names and numbers.

Do not read for story. Do not stop to admire or fix prose. Every improvement that occurs to you goes in the re-edit requests, not into the errata.

5. Document and Production Checks

Work references/proofreading-checks.md: table of contents against actual chapter titles, chapter numbering, running heads and folios (print), chapter opener consistency, front matter, back matter, copyright page, ISBN, dedication, "also by" list, glossary cross-references, and ebook navigation, links, and metadata.

6. Collate and Report

1. Write errata.md — numbered corrections, located, with original and corrected text.
2. Write queries.md — anything needing a decision.
3. Write checks.md — each check passed, failed, or not applicable.
4. Write summary.md from assets/templates/summary.md.
5. On a final proof pass, mark each errata item Landing / Not landing / Broke something else.
6. Update status.json.

Errata Classes

An errata item that requires judgment is not an errata item. Move it.

Key References (load on demand)

Templates (copy, then fill)

Outputs — these belong in proofread/.

Author input files — these belong in the manuscript folder, alongside the chapter files. All are optional.

Edge Cases

• Open copyedit queries → stop; the text is not frozen
• No style sheet → do not invent one; query the conventions that matter, or run copyedit first
• Source changed after proofreading → the pass is void for the changed sections; re-proof them
• No formatted proof → run the manuscript pass only, and say what a proof-vs-source pass would add
• A deliberately unconventional convention (unquoted dialogue, intentional fragments, dialect) → protected; never "fix"
• Author asks you to fix prose while you're here → decline and route it upstream; mixed passes destroy the value of both
• Second proof missing page breaks or running heads → note as not applicable rather than passed
• Very long manuscript → work in blocks, but keep one errata list and number it continuously
• Repeated errors of one kind → one errata entry with a count and locators, not fifty entries

Working With the Other Skills

• copyedit — runs immediately before this. Its style sheet is the authority for every decision, and its clean/ or tracked/ output is the authoritative text you are checking. Nothing in this pass may contradict it.
• line-edit — prose work, two passes earlier. A sentence that reads poorly is not a typo; route it back rather than fixing it here.
• developmental-edit — structure, long before. If editorial-review/ carries open Critical notes, the text is nowhere near ready to proofread.
• character-interview — declared character facts and voice. Useful for name and fact consistency checks, and a source of terms for the search lists.

What This Skill Does Not Do

• Make new style or grammar decisions
• Improve prose, rhythm, or word choice
• Query or re-litigate what the style sheet has already settled
• Proofread text that is still being edited
• Guarantee a clean text — a machine read-through misses plausible-word errors, and the report says so
• Replace a human final reader before publication