Positive Framing

Use these rules when editing narrative prose in /virtual-team:idea and /virtual-team:proposal outputs. Reframe what the client gains, not what they avoid losing. Enforce one governing tense per section. Never touch the hard-exclusion blocks.

Out of scope: /virtual-team:feature, /virtual-team:epic, ADRs, plans, technical reviews. Those need literal negation to function.

Framing rules

1. Replace negation-of-loss with affirmation-of-gain. Identify what the negation is protecting against; name the protected thing directly as a positive state. See references/pattern-catalog.md for 22+ seed transforms across 5 categories.
   • Before: "without throwing away the current code"
   • After: "leveraging your existing codebase"
2. No double negations. "Not uncommon" → "common". "Not without merit" → "has merit".
3. Lead each major section with the gain, not the escape. The first sentence of Executive Summary, Solution, and Scope of Work names a positive outcome.

Wiebe exception: preserve negation when it names a recognized pain the reader already feels ("you'll never miss a deadline again"). Acknowledging pain before dissolving it is gain-framing, not loss-framing.

Tense rules

4. Simple present for capabilities, scope, methodology. "We deliver", "the engagement includes".
5. Simple past for case studies and credentials. "We built", "we reduced churn 30%".
6. Simple future or present-as-future for timelines. "Phase 1 begins June 3".
7. Present perfect is conditional, not banned:
   • Allowed when anchored by a concrete quantity, named entities, or since [date]: "we have helped 40+ companies", "since 2018, we have delivered 60+ engagements".
   • Not allowed when vague: "we have been delivering for years", "the team has worked with enterprises".
   • Never in present-perfect-continuous form (has been -ing, have been -ing).
   • Mechanical heuristic: if removing the present perfect and substituting simple past or simple present preserves the meaning, switch. If the sentence loses its continuing-relevance bridge, keep it.
8. One governing tense per section. Tense shifts only on genuine time-reference change. Track Record / Credentials is the one section where anchored present perfect is the default.

See references/tense-by-section.md for the section-by-section table.

Voice rules

9. Active voice in accountability statements. "We deliver X by date Y", not "X will be delivered". Passive acceptable in policy lines ("Invoices are due net 30").
10. Modal-verb audit. Soft-flag may/might/could/should/would in client-facing sentences. Hard-flag stacked modals ("could potentially be considered").

Hard exclusions — do not edit

• /proposal Not Included sections — exclusions require literal negation
• /proposal Risks / Assumptions / Dependencies — threat language is appropriate
• /idea Risks, Assumptions, and "Not Doing" sections
• Tables, code blocks, REQ IDs, cost figures, dates, structural bullet labels
• Frontmatter, headers, any markdown structural element

Voice Profile interaction

When /proposal invokes this skill with a --target-role value, honor that profile's **Words to avoid:** list at commands/proposal.md:497-541 even when the pattern catalog suggests a banned word. For example, the cto profile bans "leverage" — substitute "build on" or "extend" instead. Voice Profile constraints override catalog defaults.

Application protocol

1. Identify section type (Executive Summary, Scope, Risks, Not Included, Track Record, etc.).
2. If the section is in the hard-exclusion list, return unchanged.
3. Apply framing rules 1-3, consulting references/pattern-catalog.md when a phrase resists direct transformation.
4. Apply tense rules 4-8, consulting references/tense-by-section.md for the section's governing tense.
5. Apply voice rules 9-10.
6. Cross-check every replacement against the active Voice Profile's forbidden-word list. If a replacement hits the list, choose an alternative or skip the transform.

Integration

This skill is loaded by:

• commands/proposal.md — invoked as a pre-pass before the humanizer in the Editorial Pipeline
• commands/idea.md — invoked in Round 5 as the sole editorial pass
• skills/skill-awareness/SKILL.md — registered in the context-to-skill mapping