Super Tighten

Produce clear, natural English that says the necessary things in the fewest useful words and applies ASD-STE100 controlled-language rules. All three requirements apply to the same final text. This file contains the complete editing workflow. Do not load another writing skill, alias, reference file, or MCP tool to obtain Unslop or Tighten instructions.

The STE baseline is Issue 9, dated January 15, 2025. The instructions below are an original implementation of its writing principles, not a reproduction of the standard or its dictionary. Read the official issue when a task requires full conformance verification. A short sentence or a clean lint result does not prove STE compliance.

Protect the meaning

Read the whole source and identify the purpose, reader, channel, author, and stakes. Distinguish instructions from descriptions. For a mixed document, apply the correct STE limits to each passage. For a message or other general prose, use the descriptive limits unless it contains instructions. Do not silently translate a non-English source; STE is an English standard.

Before a material edit, make an internal ledger of:

• Facts, names, numbers, dates, prices, units, versions, and ranges.
• Quotes, citations, URLs, link targets, commands, flags, identifiers, filenames, UI labels, and fixed strings.
• Negation, uncertainty, degree, causality, timing, conditions, exceptions, attribution, ownership, and commitments.
• Rankings, exclusivity, simultaneity, and the exact scope of each claim.
• Required definitions, warnings, caveats, and legally controlled wording.

Preserve these items and their relationships. Never turn a proposal into a commitment, a plan into a completed action, possibility into certainty, correlation into causation, or simultaneous actions into a sequence. Never invent an actor to remove passive voice or a detail to make a sentence more specific.

Leave code, machine-readable data, frontmatter, HTML attributes, quotations, citations, link targets, and deliberately fixed wording unchanged unless the request explicitly includes them. Editing table prose must preserve cell meaning, rows, columns, and alignment semantics. Formatting changes must preserve the document's non-prose structure.

The user's explicit constraints and source truth take priority over style and compression. When protected text or meaning prevents STE conformance, keep it and identify the exception briefly if it affects the requested result. Do not claim that the entire document conforms while hiding an exception.

Human writing without slop or cringe

State the answer, result, request, or action early. Give unfamiliar terms their plain-language meaning and practical consequence. Keep enough context for the intended reader to understand and act. In an existing conversation, remove repeated setup only when the reader already has that context. A handoff, requested recap, or standalone message may need it.

Remove observed problems in this order:

1. Generation residue: pasted assistant greetings and closers, reasoning narration, broken citation markers, tool artifacts, and unfinished templates.
2. Formula: inflated importance, unsupported promotion, vague authority, generic future claims, staged reversals, manufactured punchlines, rhetorical question-and-answer setups, forced triplets, and endings that only recap.
3. Empty or indirect language: abstract outcomes, vague mechanisms, noun-and-support-verb constructions, synonym cycling, redundant transitions, and claims that could move unchanged to another subject.
4. Performed humanity: fake familiarity, exaggerated enthusiasm, forced wit, borrowed slang, invented vulnerability, generic encouragement, and quirks unsupported by the voice or relationship.
5. Unhelpful structure: tiny sections, repeated bold labels, decorative emphasis, uniform cadence, and lists that hide the relationship between ideas.

Diagnose the effect in context. A formal word, a passive clause, or a real three-item set is not automatically slop. Specificity must come from evidence already supplied or verified. Retain necessary caveats; remove unrelated process and risk narration that displaces the answer.

Personality must belong to the actual author, the assistant speaking as itself, an approved brand voice, or an authorized creative genre. Preserve supported stance and emotional meaning without adding experiences, opinions, feelings, customer sentiment, metrics, or claims. STE restrictions may change the source's surface style; do not promise unchanged slang, contractions, metaphor, or cadence in a controlled-language rewrite.

Match the job. A direct message needs its purpose and appropriate relationship tone. Marketing needs a supported promise and mechanism. A report needs its result, evidence, owner, and next action. Technical text needs exact terminology and observable behavior. Scientific, legal, medical, and financial text needs its definitions, attribution, uncertainty, and necessary caveats. Keep neutral prose neutral when precision is the purpose.

For Nuko Nova or Miami Web AI copy, describe the reader's actual outcome, service, mechanism, price, or next action. Keep warmth proportionate. Use a direct call to action. Remove via-negativa slogans and generic collaboration closers unless they express necessary facts.

Write mutable prose without em dashes or spaced double-hyphen substitutes. Preserve protected dashes and valid en-dash ranges. Join related thoughts naturally; do not replace a dash with a row of fragments.

Strongest useful compression

Test the passage, paragraph, sentence, clause, phrase, word, and formatting element for removal. Delete an element only if its absence changes no necessary meaning, evidence, scope, relationship, authorized voice, readability, or usability.

• Cut throat-clearing, meta commentary, duplicated setup, restatements, recaps, and transitions with no logical function.
• Combine repeated claims and qualifications, while keeping distinct evidence and examples that serve different purposes.
• Replace indirect phrasing and support verbs with a precise action when STE vocabulary and the source meaning permit it.
• Cut empty intensifiers, hedges, praise, and faux warmth. Keep real uncertainty, degree, emphasis, and necessary relationship tone.
• Remove headings, labels, and list scaffolding that add no navigation, sequence, comparison, or clarity.
• Use the fewest clauses that preserve the actor, action, causality, timing, condition, contrast, attribution, and ownership.

Compression is subordinate to clarity and STE rules. Retain articles, connecting words, repeated terms, and explicit subjects when they prevent ambiguity. Do not omit grammar, remove necessary context, introduce contractions, replace a precise term with a shorter wrong word, or make telegraphic notes to reduce the count. More words can be necessary for a compliant construction.

ASD-STE100 vocabulary and terminology

Use controlled words with their approved meanings, parts of speech, and inflected forms. Approval of a spelling does not permit every ordinary-English use of that word. Read the relevant dictionary entry rather than relying on familiarity. Issue 9 approves check as a noun, not as a general verb. It restricts fall to downward physical motion caused by gravity; use decrease for a reduction in pressure or another value. Use less than or more than for numerical limits rather than the physical-position meanings of below or above. Rebuild the sentence when a word's approved function differs from the source use.

Use a domain term outside the general dictionary only when it qualifies as a technical noun or technical verb. Establish it from the source's official documentation, engineering information, company glossary, or subject-field terminology. Keep an internal term ledger with the term, meaning, part of speech, source, and qualifying category. Do not relabel ordinary vocabulary as technical to avoid a restriction.

Technical noun categories cover parts and equipment; vehicles and locations; tools; materials; facilities and logistics; systems and functions; science and formulas; geography; quantities and time; fixed labels; roles and proper names; anatomy; personal items and food; medical concepts; official documents; environmental conditions; colors; damage; computing; civil and military operations; law; and life forms. A term must actually belong to its stated category and be appropriate to this subject.

Technical verb categories cover manufacturing, computer processes, applicable specialist processes (engineering, science, medicine, operations, navigation, transport, and energy), and legal or regulatory processes. Prefer a general approved verb when it expresses the same meaning accurately. Do not use a technical noun as a verb or a technical verb as a noun merely to shorten a sentence.

Use one term for one item and one meaning. Keep the same wording for the same action in the same context. Select short, clear technical terms without changing official names. Exclude regional slang and jargon used only for effect. Use American English spelling unless the task's official directive requires another spelling. Preserve quotations and exact labels.

Ordinary noun groups should contain no more than three words. For a longer official technical noun, give the full form first. Then use a clearly defined shorter form or meaningful hyphen groups if this preserves its identity. Do not rename a part, label, or system without support.

Avoid idioms, figurative senses, and phrasal verbs with meanings that the dictionary does not approve. Literal words combined into an idiom do not become compliant. A dictionary-approved phrase or established technical verb can be permitted in its specific meaning. Rebuild the sentence when a direct word replacement changes the meaning or grammar.

ASD-STE100 grammar and structure

Use complete, clear sentences. Give one topic at a time and connect related ideas explicitly. Keep articles and demonstratives where grammar and comprehension need them. Avoid unclear pronouns; name the item when it, this, or they could have more than one referent. Do not use contractions.

Use approved verb forms: infinitives, commands, simple present, simple past, and simple future. Use a permitted past participle as an adjective. Avoid perfect and progressive tenses and other complex auxiliary constructions. A state expressed with a participial adjective is not necessarily a passive action. Preserve time and aspect when restructuring; if a compliant rewrite loses a material distinction, retain the meaning and disclose the exception.

Do not use verbal -ing forms. An approved dictionary word that ends in those letters can be valid in its approved function. A justified technical noun or a modifier inside a technical noun can also use that form. Do not ban all words ending in ing or falsely convert a verb into a technical noun.

Use active voice and the known system or human actor. In descriptive text, passive voice is permitted when the actor is unknown. In procedural text, give a direct command to the reader. Express an action with an approved verb rather than hiding it in a noun, except when vocabulary restrictions require a noun construction.

For procedures:

• Keep each sentence within 20 STE-counted words.
• Give one instruction per sentence. Keep simultaneous actions together when the source requires them at the same time.
• Use the command form and the primary action verb. Include the correct object, location, tool, and condition when supplied.
• Put a prerequisite or condition before the action if the reader must know it first. Separate that condition from the command with a comma.
• Keep steps in the required order. Use vertical lists for complex steps and alternatives, preserving their logical relationship.
• Notes give information. Move actual instructions into the procedure without changing their status or sequence.

For descriptive passages:

• Keep each sentence within 25 STE-counted words.
• Introduce information in a logical progression and connect it with consistent terms.
• Give each paragraph one topic and no more than six sentences.
• Use a vertical list when it makes complex information easier to understand. Keep prose when a list would obscure the relationship.

For safety instructions, preserve the required warning or caution level. Start with a clear command or condition and retain the hazard or possible result. Keep the warning where the reader needs it before the relevant action. Do not invent hazards, downgrade their severity, or move an instruction into a note. Protected safety wording stays exact, with an explicit exception when it does not meet STE.

Do not use semicolons in mutable STE prose. Use other punctuation for its normal purpose. Hyphenate genuinely related word groups, not arbitrary strings to evade a limit. Use parentheses for relevant references, item identifiers, step identifiers, abbreviations, singular/plural forms, short explanations, or alternatives. Do not hide required actions or long prose inside them.

Count words with STE section 8 conventions, not a whitespace split alone. A parenthesized group, a number, a number with its unit, an abbreviation, an alphanumeric identifier, quoted text, a fixed title/heading/label, a proper name, or a legitimate hyphenated group can count as one word. In a vertical-list introduction, a colon ends a counted sentence like a period. Use these conventions only for genuine elements; invented labels, quotation marks, parentheses, and hyphens must not conceal an overlong sentence.

Apply all three requirements and verify

Edit for human purpose and meaning, remove unnecessary language, then enforce STE vocabulary and structure on that same text. Check the complete result again because compression can break clarity and a STE rewrite can reintroduce padding. Do not present three alternative versions or treat one pass as a substitute for the others.

Before delivery, compare the source and result for every protected fact and relationship. Restore words lost to compression when needed. Review grammar, sentence limits, paragraph limits, terminology, conditions, warnings, and source boundaries. Confirm that the result is useful to its reader and that all personality belongs to the authorized voice. A no-op is valid if the source already meets all three requirements.

When the official Issue 9 standard is available, verify every mutable word's approved sense, part of speech, and form, plus every technical-term exception and relevant writing rule. The standard and a terminology source are verification inputs, not dependencies on another skill. Do not bundle or republish the copyrighted standard or its dictionary.

If the standard or required term evidence is unavailable, complete the useful rewrite from the embedded rules. Do not claim full ASD-STE100 compliance. Add a single concise note that vocabulary conformance is unverified when this limitation matters to the requested result. Do not demand another file merely to do a normal Super Tighten rewrite. An explicit compliance audit must report unavailable checks and protected exceptions.

Return only the final text by default. Add a short note only for a material ambiguity, an unresolved preservation conflict, or the verification limit above. In audit mode, give verified findings and focused fixes without rewriting. In file mode, edit only authorized prose and report the result briefly. Treat delegated text as unreviewed source and apply this entire workflow before delivery.

Primary sources

• ASD-STE100 Issue 9: official writing rules, approved vocabulary, and word-count conventions.
• STEMG FAQ: scope, vocabulary restrictions, technical terms, passive voice, and permitted -ing uses.
• Official downloads: current issue and the distinction between plausible AI output and verified compliance.

These source links establish the STE baseline. They do not replace the instructions embedded above. Super Tighten is an independent Nuko Nova skill and does not imply ASD endorsement or certification.