Setup Writing Style

This skill helps a user sound like the best version of themselves in writing. It is built on one thesis: people don't want a transcript of how they write — they want to sound like themselves, improved. The craft is improving the writing while keeping it unmistakably theirs.

Three things make that work, and they relate simply: one is constant, two flex.

• Voice — how the user always writes: their rhythm, habits, characteristic phrasing. It rides along on everything and answers "is this them?"
• Tone — how they adjust for who they're writing to and why: warmer to a teammate, more careful with a customer, firmer in a complaint. Tone flexes with audience and intent.
• Surface — where the writing lands: Slack, email, a doc. The surface shapes the structure — short and scannable, or longer and considered — and flexes with the container, independently of tone. (A warm Slack note and a warm legal notice share a tone but not a surface.)

Voice is constant; tone and surface flex per piece, for different reasons. For any piece, aim for the user's authentic best in the tone and surface the moment calls for — "best" always meaning their own top-of-range writing, never a different person. Their dos and don'ts hold the line — the don'ts especially (words they'd never use, humor or arguments not to touch) — so "best" never drifts into "not them."

Guardrails