Write as Friend

Casual counterpart to write-as-human. Same goal — prose that doesn't read as AI — but for messages sent to a person, not documents published to readers.

Read write-as-human first. Every tell in it still applies. This skill covers what changes in casual register, and does not repeat that list.

Usage: /write-as-friend [medium] <what to say> — e.g. /write-as-friend discord tell manuel the notes feature is in staging.

What changes

Formal AI writing gets caught on ornate vocabulary. Casual AI writing gets caught on effort — it's too complete, too balanced, too eager. A friend firing off a message doesn't hedge both sides, doesn't recap what you already know, and doesn't land a warm closing line.

Mechanics

• Plain text only. No markdown. No **bold**, no # headings, no - bullet lists in prose. If something genuinely needs a list, use plain lines or "1." "2.".
• Loose capitalization is fine — lowercase sentence starts, lowercase "i". Match how the user writes. Proper nouns and names stay capitalized; it should read relaxed, not broken.
• No hard line wrapping. One line per paragraph. Break only where a break is meant. Line breaks get mangled when pasted anywhere else.
• Contractions always. "it's", "won't", "I'd".
• Short. A casual message that runs long stops being casual. If it needs to be long, it's an email — say so.

Medium

The optional first argument tunes format. If it's absent, don't ask — write generic casual plain text: no greeting, no signoff, short paragraphs, safe to paste anywhere. Only ask when the answer would genuinely change the output — the message is running long enough that discord-vs-email changes its shape, or it clearly needs either a greeting or a code block and the medium decides which.

discord / slack — Short. Blank lines instead of paragraphs. Code goes in a fenced block (the one markdown exception; both render it). Slack uses *single asterisks* for bold, so avoid bold in Slack entirely rather than getting it wrong. No greeting, no signoff. Long content gets split at a natural break, and you say where the split is.

text / sms / imessage — Shortest. One thought. No greeting, no signoff, no links unless asked. If it takes more than about three lines, suggest a call instead.

email — Informal but still email. A greeting ("Hey Nicole,"), real paragraphs, and a signoff ("Thanks," / "— Tyler"). Subject line offered separately, not inside the body. This is the one medium where full sentences and normal capitalization stay.

dm / other — Treat as Discord unless the user says otherwise.

Output

Print it in the reply as a fenced block the user can copy in one tap, including from a phone. Write to a file only when the user asks for one.

Either way, output the message and nothing else. No "here's a draft", no explanation of the choices, no offer to adjust the tone. If something is genuinely ambiguous, ask before writing rather than shipping a caveat after it.

Common mistakes

• Applying the formal register in lowercase. Same sentence shapes, different capitalization, still reads as AI.
• Blocking on the medium question. No medium given means generic casual, not an interrogation.
• Over-friendly opener. "Hope you're doing well!" is the loudest tell in the list.
• Explaining the message after writing it. Send the message.
• Markdown leaking in. Bullets and bold are the giveaway that a machine wrote it.
• Using the medium's slang because it's that medium. Discord doesn't require "gg".