Reviewing technical prose

REQUIRED BACKGROUND: the technical-writing skill, including references/style.md (banned constructions) and references/truth.md (claim rules).

Overview

Editing is diagnosis. Every edit names the concrete defect it fixes; the smallest edit that fixes it wins. Rewriting natural or approved language without a named defect is itself a defect.

Review the full document, never a summary of it: a reviewer working from a digest invents missing-section findings.

When to invoke, and not

Invoke when reviewing or rewriting someone else's technical text, when producing a findings report on a document, and as the final pass before delivering anything you wrote yourself. Do NOT invoke for code review (only the prose in it), and do not use a review pass to relitigate settled decisions, expand scope, or restyle a document onto your own preferences.

Severity mapping

• BLOCKER: hard-rule violations (banned dashes, changelog sections, delivery history in prose) and any claim the cited source does not support or that traces to nothing.
• WARNING: banned constructions, structural defects (question headings, buried conclusions, rearrangeable paragraphs), and claims supported only loosely.
• OBS: ambiguity, missing polish, and anything an attentive author would likely catch.